Improving Sustainability

For an organisation looking to improve its sustainability it is hard to point to specific steps. So much depends on where the organisation is starting from.

Governance

Some organisations will need to look at governance. If an organisation is employing staff, has leased premises, or is thinking of contracting to run a service they should look at limiting their liability. All of these examples could potentially lead to the organisation being liable for substantial costs. If the organisation is unincorporated the trustees are liable to pay these. If the organisation is incorporated in most cases the liability falls on the organisation rather than the trustees. Another area to examine is whether the right skills are available to the Management Committee.

Other areas of Risk

Other areas of risk may include a failure to carry out adequate risk assessments, not having equal opportunities policies, failing to take professional advice over investments, not having relevant insurance in place, a lack of financial controls etc.

Financial Controls

Particularly when facing turbulent times a tight control on finances can be helpful. If there is a chance that funding may be cut, having up-to-date financial records, a cashflow-analysis, and a good idea of costs will make planning far easier. This may make the difference between an organisation closing and being able to continue. It may also mean that some organisations close rather than continuing when they should not (and breaking the law by doing so).

Planning

Some organisations may benefit from looking at improving their planning. This will usually require the financial information mentioned above. In addition to Business Planning or Strategic Planning, in turbulent times it may be a good idea to look at contingency planning. This involves looking at a number of scenarios. For example, what would happen if funding was cut by 5%, by 15%, or cut entirely? Having already explored the options available, a funding cut becomes easier to cope with, as decisions do not have to be made immediately with inadequate information. Instead it becomes possible to respond proactively rather than reactively to a situation.

Another type of planning that would be useful for organisations is a form of Emergency Response Planning. This deals with questions such as:

• What would happen if we couldn’t access our premises (due to fire, flood, etc)?
• What would happen if we lost our computer server?
• Who are the key members of staff and how would we cover for their absence?

There are many more questions that could be added and the questions will differ from one organisation to another. Like the contingency planning they enable an organisation to respond to a crisis.

The consequence of not addressing sustainability

The consequence of failing to address sustainability is to remove the choices available to an organisation. Some areas will have an immediate effect, other areas will only become apparent in times of crisis, still others will act to drain the organisation over time. Many can be prevented by acting in advance.

This is a summary of a report prepared by the CRIB Project entitled “Towards Sustainability”. This summary was first printed in the March edition of Grapevine. A full copy of the report can be downloaded from here.