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A Child’s Perspective on Risk

By Melanie L. Herman

Many adults feel compelled to break complex landscapes into simple and easy-to-grasp concepts. Whether we are trying to identify the principal exposures facing a large multi-service social services agency or working to establish measures that will protect a vulnerable client group from harm, adults tend to quickly focus on one or more big items in the landscape—we forbid a child from riding the largest and in our minds most frightening ride at the carnival midway or spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the threat of terrorism facing a group of young people headed overseas.

Yet simple solutions to risky situations warrant our attention. And they are appealing to nonprofit leaders because they often cost little or nothing to implement. Affordability is always a consideration in the budget-conscious nonprofit world.

From our early schooling to post-graduate education, we are taught to extract the “main” theme of a work of fiction, or analyze a nonfiction writer’s primary thesis. Our adult brains gravitate to the big issues and what appear to be the most significant risks facing our organizations.

Yet exposures are most often more complex than our short attention spans and taxed adult brains can handle. Risks in the nonprofit sector are more akin to a busy tapestry depicting many scenarios and possibilities. Last week I asked my seven-year-old daughter Jessica if she would draw a picture illustrating the word “risk.” I offered no clues abut my own perspective on risk nor did she ask me to explain what I expected. Her drawing appears below.

Jessica’s drawing shows a complex landscape and layers of risk.

The principal actors in the drawing appear to be hanging off the side of a cliff. One is offering a helping hand to the other. It is unclear whether the two are simply involved in recreational repelling or whether one has fallen off the side of the mountain and is being rescued. At the bottom of the drawing another risk is depicted: a shark swims in the waters below the climbers—with his gaze directed at the climber closest to him. Risk appears elsewhere in the drawing as the damaging UVB rays of the sun shine down on the climbers.

Despite the presence of risk in many forms, the actors in this risk tapestry appear to be willing participants. Both climbers are grinning, and even the shark seems happy though his intended target is moving in the direction of safety.

What can we learn from a child’s perspective on risk?

First, threats rarely emanate from a single source. When nonprofit leaders seek to protect vulnerable clients from harm, they cannot limit their scope to the obvious. There is a continuing tendency to focus youth-protection programs on screening adult personnel, despite the compelling evidence that a growing threat exists from youth-on-youth misbehavior, accidents, and ineffective supervision of fully-screening staff.

Second, risk taking is generally undertaken with optimism. Put another way, we don’t expect things to go wrong. We expect all of our ambitious goals to be met if we work hard enough and are sincere in our commitment to the cause. Social services agencies design creative approaches to serving clients with the intent of changing lives. We cannot be distracted by the bright sun and positive outlooks in our risk landscapes. We must look carefully at the colorful threads in the tapestry and commit to unraveling the risks that threaten the mission of our organizations.

Finally, the truth about risk may not be evident at first glance. When I asked Jessica to tell me more about the drawing, she explained that the two figures had been going for a leisurely swim in the ocean when one spotted a shark swimming nearby. Thankfully one of the swimmers was an experienced mountain climber and able to scramble up the side of the cliff. He quickly threw a rope to his companion. “Thank goodness,” she added, because “the shark down there was extremely hungry.”

When nonprofit risk managers examine the landscapes of their organizations, it is often difficult to see the full picture. The motivations or expectations of a partner organization may not be revealed until a dispute arises. Or the background of a young participant may be unknown to the leaders of a nonprofit recreation program. Risk managers must be prepared to cope with various outcomes stemming from the interplay of environmental or cultural conditions, the backgrounds and perspectives of participants in an activity, and the nature of the activity itself. We must train ourselves to look at our organizational landscapes as if we had the benefit of x-ray vision.

Doing so is not an impossible task, nor are risk managers destined to miss the very exposures that could jeopardize a nonprofit’s mission. We can achieve this by examining past incidents and near-misses, and carefully considering each element of our operating landscape. These elements include:

• Participants (What do we know about the clients we are serving? How does that knowledge inform our understanding about risk?)
  
  
• Service providers (What do we know about the adults who will manage the activity or program?)
  
  
• Program-design/activity (What are the inherent and other risks associated with the activity or program itself?)
  
  
• Environment in which the program will take plan (What risks exist due to the venue we have selected or conditions such as weather or time of day?)

By giving careful thought to these elements and how they intersect, we can move beyond a simple perspective on risk and begin to see the detail and complexity in our risk landscapes. With a more child-like perspective on risk, we are in the strongest possible position to protect the vital missions of our community-serving organizations and throw down that much-needed safety rope as it is needed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melanie Herman is executive director of the Nonprofit Risk Management Center (www.nonprofitrisk.org). She can be reached at Melanie@nonprofitrisk.org.

riskVue | The webzine for risk management professionals
October 2005