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Single points of failure are pernicious. Here's how to begin addressing them.
In my last post, I addressed whether nonprofits have a growing problem with SPOFs -- single points of failure that can expose the nonprofit to loss, operational failure, or inefficient performance. This lack of redundancy is a solvable problem. Building resilience means deliberately creating backup capacity across your people, systems, and workflows. The goal is simple: no critical function should depend on one person, one system, or one vendor. Here’s a path forward.
Invest time in teaching employees how to do parts of each other’s jobs. Focus on your most fragile roles first: finances, fundraising, IT access, and reporting. Make sure at least two people understand each critical process. You don’t need everyone to do everything, but no vital task should belong to only one person. Cross-training can keep your nonprofit running when someone is out unexpectedly.
This also brings bonus benefits: a fill-in staffer might spot ways to improve a process, and knowing coworkers could step in creates a sense of shared responsibility rather than silos. Cross-training even helps deter fraud because if people know a colleague might review their work, there’s less temptation for mischief.
Create simple process notes or checklists for routine and mission-critical tasks. Maintain an updated contacts list for major partners and funders. Write down login credentials securely (use a password manager or encrypted file) and make sure more than one trusted person has access. I often suggest creating a short “desk manual” for each role: what are this person’s key duties and how do they do them? It’s invaluable during a transition or disruption. Documentation is redundancy. It keeps knowledge from disappearing when people do.
Documentation is great, but if nobody follows it, someone standing in for an absentee will not perform the task as your beneficiaries expect it. A friend says that there are four ways one can describe a process:
Always aim for #4.
If only one person can log into a system, sign checks, or access key accounts, your organization is exposed. Use modern tools such as password managers, shared admin roles, and role-based permissions to spread access safely. Use a shared team calendar for important deadlines so no task is known only to one person. Make sure more than one staff member has signing authority for bank accounts or can authorize expenditures. If you maintain a SPOF for some reason, make sure it is a very good reason.
Ask your vendors and service providers what’s their plan is if they fail you. If you have one internet provider, identify a backup way to get online (even if it’s a hotspot) for emergencies. If you use a single cloud storage service, consider regularly exporting critical data to an alternative location or keeping a local backup. For any mission-critical service, research an alternate vendor you could turn to quickly if needed. Even if you don’t contract with two vendors, knowing your Plan B in advance will save precious time if Plan A goes down.
Redundancy in staffing isn’t just for the CEO role. Certainly, nonprofits should have an emergency succession plan for the executive director and other top leaders. But extend that thinking to any role vital to daily operations. Who is the second-in-command for key departments, projects, or locations? Ask: If this person left tomorrow, who steps in? If the answer is “no one,” you’ve just identified a SPOF.
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is essentially a playbook for how your organization will keep running during disruptions. It ties together all the above steps into an actionable roadmap. Creating a BCP forces you to identify single points of failure and address them. Importantly, don’t let the plan gather dust: test it. Run drills or table-top exercises (e.g., “What would we do if our database was down for a week?”). Increasingly, regulators and funders expect nonprofits to have such plans, and some even mandate contingency planning or ask for your continuity plan as a condition of support.
Beyond compliance, having a robust continuity plan gives confidence to staff, donors, and clients that your nonprofit can weather a storm. It’s far better to answer a funder’s question about risk with “Yes, we have a plan for that” than to risk looking like a deer in headlights when a crisis hits.
Each of these steps reinforces the others. Together, they ensure that your nonprofit can accomplish tasks through multiple mechanisms. If one fails, others are in place to keep operations running. Think of it like a belt-and-suspenders approach: you’re creating layers of support
Resilience, including redundancy, is central to our work at Risk Alternatives. Our Business Continuity Planning services guide nonprofits through identifying critical functions and building pragmatic backup strategies, so you’re never caught off guard. And our Foundations for Growth program specifically helps nonprofits embed these habits into their culture. We help teams build internal muscle memory for dealing with disruption and create a culture of shared responsibility for safeguarding the mission. In practice, that means instituting regular risk reviews, fostering open communication so that staff flag vulnerabilities early, and empowering people at all levels to ask “What if…?” and then act on the answers.
The bottom line: you can’t eliminate risk, but you can strive to eliminate single points of failure. The fewer the SPOFs, the stronger the organization.