Risks Management Strategy
The Alliance recognizes and anticipates both operational and strategic risks that may undermine the implementation of the Phase 1 Strategic Plan 2021-2023. However, seven(7) key potential risks have been identified to include: Management, service delivery, advocacy, marketing and communication, finance and stakeholders engagement. These factors that can hamper the development of the Alliance and some of the risk factors are cross cutting and affect more than only one area in the organizational set-up and development. They are itemized in table 10 below.
However, the Alliance is confident of overcoming these inherent risks by growing into a strong organization following a holistic approach and a well-developed and realistic Strategic Plan in order to monitor progress, to allow for reflection and act immediately, if internal structural changes are necessary.
A Strategic Plan no doubt, is an important start however, but this document alone will not guarantee any success of a successful collaboration. There are still a multitude of factors that can prevent the Alliance from achieving their goals. Knowing those challenges and address or rather prevent those situations to occur is an important step towards sustainability and success for the Alliance.
Finally with strong, committed and knowledgeable management put in place now, willing to collaborate and to build up the Alliance then this is the most important step in avoiding the below listed risk factor.
Table 12: Risk Factors for REEEA-Alliance
| Organizational Area | Potential Risk Factors |
|---|---|
| Management | - Weak governance leads to membership mistrust - Poor leadership and lack of supervision of staff leads to inactive organization - Lack of clear goals and/or defined strategy leads to incoherent activities and its expertise in specific topics won’t be recognized - Organizational roles are not clearly assigned regarding functions of member acquisition and market penetration - Staff is poorly trained or not experienced to do the assigned job - Poor use of modern technologies - Etc. |
| Service Delivery | - Lack of preparation /poorly planned activities - No clear assignment of functional responsibilities (see also under management) - Developed services are not needed in the market nor demand driven (Lack of Needs Assessment done among members) - Expected benefits were unrealistic - Lack of service delivery process - Lack of standards for service delivery (Quality insurance) - None or weak system in place that allows for member feedback - Lack of evaluation and monitoring of implemented services to allow for improvements - Staff is not skilled to organize or implement the desired service (see also under management) - Selected trainer for implemented service was not delivering the expected input - Etc |
| Advocacy | - Lack of transparency on which and why topic was chosen - Lack of structured process - Lack of protocolled advocacy and no feedback back to members - Etc |
| Marketing and Communication | - No clear assignment who is in charge for marketing & communications (see also under management) - No strategy or plan on membership acquisition - Lack of engaging members (no membership surveys are done, no need assessments questionnaires and therefore no demand driven services are developed) (see also under services) - Members and non-members do not know about service portfolio - Members don’t see the benefit of participating in offered services (lack of clear communication) - Staff is not skilled for this task (see also under services and management) - Etc |
| Finance | - Lack of financial monitoring - Staff is not skilled for this task (see also under services, management and marketing & communications) - Inadequate allocation of funding - Inadequate calculation of cost-benefit of services - Poor collection of membership fees and dues - Inadequate accounting and planning of expenses and income - Etc |
| Stakeholders | - Lack of a detailed stakeholder map, resulting in difficulties to identify the right stakeholder to address - Lack of transparency during meetings with stakeholders - Inability to create support from stakeholders - Lack of fact-based information to share with stakeholders - Etc |