Hello,
We wanted to share with you the latest Willis report available for download here, delving into reputational risks inherent to the NGO and Charity sector. Based on a survey of senior leaders across the globe, the report explores how budget cuts and reduced donations, combined with rising demand for services and higher costs, are affecting operations. In addition to these challenges, reputational events have the potential to undermine public trust in the institutions and lead to devastating financial consequences.
Some key findings include:
- Customer abuse perceived as less likely: 33% of NGOs and charities named customer abuse as one of their top reputational risks, down from 49% in 2023 and from 66% in 2022, indicating they are gaining greater control over vetting, safeguarding and safety procedures.
- Cyber risk tops concerns, along with environmental and governance issues: 60% rated the potential fallout from a cyber-attack as a top reputational risk, compared to 27% in 2023, reflecting increasing nervousness about the potential fallout, for example, if sensitive personal data is breached. Environmental and governance issues remain top reputational risks, ranked as such by 62% and 61% of respondents, respectively.
- Risk management maturity is declining:Only 9% have a formal process to assess and manage reputational risks that is linked to board level KPIs, while 34% say oversight of reputation-related risks happens at most board meetings, down from 53% in 2023.
- Charities engage less often with stakeholders: 30% of organizations said they engaged with stakeholders at least quarterly, down from 51% in 2023. 52% said C-suite engaged at least quarterly on social media, down from 80% in our last survey. These results suggest a lack of time and bandwidth as leaders firefight wider challenges.
- Financial modelling and resilience are low: Only 2% said they had a great deal of modelling capability to understand the costs and liabilities associated with reputational damage, while just 1% said their resilience to a reputational crisis was very good.
The report provides actionable advice to help organisations understand and manage risk and build resilience.
We invite you to peruse the linked report and get in touch if you would like to follow up with Willis’ experts on any of the findings.