November 16, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
By NICOLE WALLACE
A new CD-ROM helps charities evaluate whether they are taking the necessary precautions to protect themselves from lawsuits, accidents, and other hazards.
The Nonprofit Risk Management Center, in Washington, created the Nonprofit Computer Assisted Risk Evaluation System, or Nonprofit CARES, to help small and medium-sized charities that cannot afford to hire a consultant to conduct a risk assessment. Nonprofit CARES consists of an introduction to risk management and five other sections that focus on major areas of concern: employment practices, contracts, special events, protecting clients, and transportation.
Each section starts out with a short video that introduces the topic, followed by more-detailed material on the topic and questions that assess organizations’ risk-management practices. After completing the assessment questions, users can generate a report that offers recommendations based on the answers they gave about their organization.
To support the development of Nonprofit CARES, the center received grants from Munich-American RiskPartners, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Public Entity Risk Institute, and the St. Paul Companies Foundation.
Nonprofit CARES costs $89, and requires a 133 megahertz Pentium-class PC, Microsoft Windows 95 or 98, 32 megabytes of RAM with 16 megabytes of free RAM, and 40 megabytes of hard-disk space.
For more information: Go to http://www.nonprofitrisk.org/cares/cares.htm.
