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A collaboration of the Land Trust Alliance and Connecticut Land Conservation Council, the Connecticut Risk Management Initiative was created help land trusts ensure the permanency of their work by understanding and identifying risk, and assessing current risk management strategies through a series of online training sessions. Risk management is all about helping land trusts cope with uncertainty, and includes examining areas of potential risk within the organization including governance, financial practices, land transactions, stewardship, and programming.
Recordings of the webinars, originally offered in 2021, are available here. Each video in the series is designed to help land trust be better prepared to protect the organization and defend its conserved lands, as well as have a greater peace of mind that their organization is prepared to prevail in potential legal challenges in the future. Watch the introductory session, HERE »
Session One – Introduction to Risk Management: In this first session, participants learned what risk is and how you can embrace risk management as a discipline to protect your land trust’s assets. We also covered the tools that are available to help you assess and balance risk. WATCH HERE »
Session Two – Governance and Finance: The goal of this session was to help participants understand the governance and finance related risks to nonprofit organizations that are committed to protecting land in perpetuity. This included considerations of your board, employees, and volunteers, as well as your reputation and budgetary needs. WATCH HERE »
Session Three – Land Transactions: This session provided a better understanding of the risks related to project selection, transactions, recording, and recordkeeping. There was an emphasis on ensuring sound transactions, including legal review, title work, budgets, environmental review, and more. WATCH HERE »
Session Four – Stewardship and Programs: Participants learned about stewardship related risks (including monitoring, baseline documentation, management plans and dealing with possible problems) as well as those related to programming, volunteers, and communications. WATCH HERE »
Session Five – Practicing Risk Assessment: In this last session, participants were introduced to risk assessment, including how to form an assessment team and the tools and resources available to help your organization assess risk and formulate a plan to address risks. WATCH HERE »