Applying New Eyes: A Complacency Check

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/camera_is_a_mirror_with_memory/

When was the last time you conducted a complacency check for your nonprofit's fundraising and overall operations? 

What are you taking for granted? What can you look at and improve with new eyes?

What have you been doing the exact same way for years without incident, so much so that you may be underestimating the risk?

Recently, a very dedicated volunteer trained to the Firefighter II, Instructor I and EMT-I levels joined his colleagues for an evening of car fire training at a local facility designated for such a purpose. This volunteer was to ignite the fire while one of the other instructors would lead a group of students up to then extinguishes the fire.

He approached the car with the flare, an activity he’d performed a dozen times before.  Only this time he did not have a proper angle on the vehicle.  When the fire ignited, his head was engulfed in a ball of burning fuel vapor.  He was wearing his full PPE, with the exception of his SCBA mask. Thankfully, the subsequent hospital and burn unit visits yielded a report of only second degree burns and no permanent damage. 

Since that evening, several colleagues have told him they would have, and had, equipped themselves the exact same way had they been the one responsible for lighting that evening. Unintended complacency had developed surrounding a drill that had been run without incidents dozens is not hundreds of times. Review of approach and SCBA mask will undoubtedly be the new policy for such training fires. Thankfully, the pain of this lesson for the burned instructor was not nearly as serious as it could have been. 

This experience is a reminder that now is the perfect time to step back and look at your operations with new eyes. Before any service recipient, staff member, volunteer or donor is hurt or in any way negatively impacted, conduct a review of your operations today for unintended complacency.