Risk Register
Summary
A risk register is a living table of everything that could go materially wrong in the campaign — each risk rated by likelihood and impact, with a named mitigation owner and a trigger for when to act. It is the operational output of the risk management discipline.
Body
A risk register is built at the planning stage and reviewed at every milestone. Its purpose is to make the campaign’s vulnerabilities explicit before they become crises — and to ensure someone is already thinking about the response. The local sources support this only indirectly: the People Power Manual’s strategy sequence includes situational analysis, tactical timeline, campaign objectives, and evaluation; the Community Tool Box points campaigners toward assessing, planning, taking action, evaluating, and sustaining work; and the Commons Library is the broader repository for campaign strategy and organising resources [source: people-power-manual] [source: community-tool-box] [source: commons-library].
The register structure:
| Risk | Category | Likelihood (1–5) | Impact (1–5) | Score | Mitigation | Owner | Trigger |
|---|
Risk categories for campaigns:
- Operational — key person leaves, volunteer burnout, supplier fails, event cancelled
- Reputational — message backfires, opponent frames the campaign, media runs a hostile angle
- Legal / security — protest law violation, activist surveillance, data breach, de-platforming
- Financial — funding falls through, major donor pulls out, unexpected cost
- Political — target shifts position in a way that undermines the campaign’s leverage, coalition partner breaks ranks
The four risk responses: avoid the risk by changing the plan, reduce likelihood or impact, transfer the risk through insurance or contracting, or consciously accept it. Each risk also needs a trigger: the observable condition that activates the mitigation. “Monitor closely” is not a trigger; “if more than three core volunteers withdraw in one week, activate the handover protocol” is.
Use it for
Pre-mortem planning; milestone review conversations; onboarding new team members who need to understand what could go wrong; funder risk disclosures.
Related
- risk-management
- campaign-planning
- campaign-project-management
- digital-security
- coalition-building
- volunteer-management
Open Questions
Does the Community Tool Box, Commons Library, or another campaign source have a direct risk-register template? Does any campaigning-specific source address activist safety risk in repressive contexts specifically?
FAQ
What is a risk register?
A risk register is a living table of everything that could go materially wrong in the campaign — each risk rated by likelihood and impact, with a named mitigation owner and a trigger for when to act. It is the operational output of the risk-management discipline. The register is built at the planning stage and reviewed at every milestone, and its purpose is to make the campaign’s vulnerabilities explicit before they become crises.
What are the columns of a risk register?
The register structure is a table with eight columns: Risk, Category, Likelihood (1–5), Impact (1–5), Score, Mitigation, Owner, and Trigger. Monitor closely is not a trigger; if more than three core volunteers withdraw in one week, activate the handover protocol is. The four risk responses are to avoid the risk by changing the plan, reduce likelihood or impact, transfer the risk through insurance or contracting, or consciously accept it.
What risk categories matter for campaigns?
The risk categories for campaigns are five. Operational — key person leaves, volunteer burnout, supplier fails, event cancelled. Reputational — message backfires, opponent frames the campaign, media runs a hostile angle. Legal / security — protest law violation, activist surveillance, data breach, de-platforming. Financial — funding falls through, major donor pulls out, unexpected cost. Political — target shifts position in a way that undermines the campaign’s leverage, coalition partner breaks ranks.
What is the source gap for the risk register?
The local sources support this only indirectly: the People Power Manual’s strategy sequence includes situational analysis, tactical timeline, campaign objectives, and evaluation [source: people-power-manual]; the Community Tool Box points toward assessing, planning, taking action, evaluating, and sustaining work [source: community-tool-box]; the Commons Library is the broader repository for campaign-strategy and organising resources [source: commons-library]. The note records that no campaigning-specific risk-register template exists in the current corpus.
Sources & verification
- sources/people-power-manual — grounding: secondary — strategy sequence and tactical-timeline context.
- sources/community-tool-box — grounding: secondary — assessment/planning/action/evaluation cycle.
- sources/commons-library — grounding: secondary — campaign-strategy and organising library.
Learn more
- On Wikipedia: Heritage at Risk Register — CC BY-SA 4.0