Hot off the Presses: Safety and Health in Nonprofits Toolkit

January 15, 2020

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Your people matter.

So let’s make sure you have the information and tools to protect them and follow the law.

Nonprofit people are all about the work. We roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done, from moving furniture for events to sitting in old chairs not quite at the right height. We know our people matter—where would we be without our tireless volunteers and dedicated staff! And yet paying close attention to safety and health falls by the wayside because we lack time, money, or technical knowledge to do the right thing.

Safety and Health in Nonprofits to the rescue. The learning team at Washington Nonprofits spent months building a resource on safety and health basics with you in mind. We started by asking nonprofit leaders about their biggest challenges when it comes to safety and health. They told us that they had six main areas of concern:

  1. Desk work and ergonomic issues
  2. Travel and safety
  3. Working with vulnerable populations
  4. Handling food
  5. Working in low budget spaces
  6. Physical exertion

Can you relate? What safety and health issues are most on your mind?

Once we heard from nonprofit leaders across Washington, we poured through the Labor & Industries informative website, paying close attention to the Core Rules that all business need to live by. Nonprofit experts in safety and risk contributed their expertise and carefully reviewed of the final version of the guide. We know you have come to expect grab-and-go tools with our kits, and we have followed through with checklists, sample documents, and ways to talk with your board and staff about these topics.

Safety and Health in Nonprofits is designed to help you achieve 3 main goals:

  • Build a safety and health culture: We break culture down into its parts and help you find ways for safety and health to show up in your everyday work
  • Follow the law: There are five important ways that you can keep your organization legal, actions that too often fall on the Labor & Industries “top violations” list.
  • Find solutions for your organization: It’s one thing to know the facts. It’s another to actually put programs in place so they become habits. We provide three ways to think about solutions for your organization.

We’re excited to share the Safety and Health Toolkit with you! Join us on March 10, 2020 at noon as Nancy Bacon (Washington Nonprofits) and Gary Sadowski (Washington State Labor & Industries) talk about safety and health in a 90 minute webinar. You will leave ready to improve how you take care of your most important asset, your people.

Three ways to learn about Safety and Health in Nonprofits:

Funding and support for this project has been provided by the State of Washington, Department of Labor Industries, Safety and Health Investment Projects

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