3 Ways To Keep Your Nonprofit Safe

Starting a nonprofit organization can be a great way to give back to people in your local area or to help those who feel a strong affinity for it. Nonprofits can be created for many reasons, such as charitable endeavors, educational purposes, religion-based, or literary purposes.

However, your nonprofit is a company, and there are rules that you need to adhere to to ensure that everything is legal and above board despite you doing this to be able to help others. Filing taxes, conforming to bylaws, not having shareholders, or collecting substantial profits are just a few legalities you need to adhere to.

But one other aspect of running a nonprofit is ensuring it is safe and secure and you are able to do what you do without the threat of everything being taken away from you due to poor choices or circumstances out of your control.

Establish Internal Controls

Dangers for any company can come from multiple directions, including internally. You need to put operating policies into place and then establish internal control to ensure that these policies are being followed and that everything is documented.

If you need to follow a specific set of instructions or have certain methods in place to support those you help, then you at least need to have controls to ensure that nothing is being abused and everyone is working as expected and meeting guidelines.

Have someone review everything, monitor what is happening, and collect feedback on a regular basis. Ensure that no one person is the only person able to carry out certain tasks or perform specific duties to remove the risk of this being misinterpreted or used for fraudulent purposes.

Take Out Insurance

Nonprofits aren't exempt from disasters, both of the physical kind or being sued financially. Being able to protect what you do by having the right insurance is paramount to help you cover the costs associated with things such as building damage from extreme weather, protecting those you help within your normal duties, transportation methods, and equipment damage or theft, for example. If you are a church running a nonprofit or simply helping the community, you can get Commercial Insurance for Churches or nonprofits to help you mitigate risk and give you a safety net should anything go wrong.

Treat Employees and Volunteers Correctly

If you want to protect your nonprofit, you need to look at how you treat people associated with it and support what you do. The idea of this venture is to provide help and assistance to others, so ensuring you are treating people properly and ensuring everyone within the organization is happy and content with what they do and is not in any way disillusioned or resentful can help you to keep everything safe and secure. A disgruntled employee can cause all kinds of issues and impact your ability to carry out the good work you do whether they have reason to or not. A bad reputation can spread quickly, and while the popular saying "there is no smoke without fire" isn't always true, rumors can spread fast and become damaging. So treat employees well, address issues immediately, and reduce the risk of fraud or damage from within your organization.