I enjoyed talking at Fundraising Intelligence Conference 2021 last week about how to manage your reputation in times of crisis.

Charities, social enterprises, non-profits and public bodies are, of course, just as susceptible to reputational disasters as private companies.

The sector was rocked last year by a large-scale cyber attack on specialist software firm Blackbaud, which meant the National Trust, Crisis and Sue Ryder were amongst 50 charities that had customer data stolen. And charities, in recent times, have been hit by cases of corruption, staff harassment, racism, fraud, sexual exploitation and more.

I spoke about the importance of not just dealing with a crisis when it arises but managing three distinct phases – preparation, response and recovery – pointing to cases from the commercial and non-profit sectors to highlight important lessons.

The audience raised interesting questions including the reputational impact of paying a ransom for stolen data and whether there can be a risk of saying too much about a crisis and unnecessarily amplifying the problem.

You can see my presentation here: