How to Put the ASAE Crisis & Risk Management Toolkit Into Action

In today’s unpredictable environment, association leaders need more than a plan on paper. ASAE’s “Associations Guide to Risk and Crisis Management” is a practical resource that helps associations identify risks, prepare teams, and respond effectively when the unexpected happens.

We’ve created a brief companion page to make the guide more accessible in real-world applications. You’ll find a quick pathway to assess your current readiness, test your plan, and keep it up to date.

Business Continuity Plan Checklist - (Updated 2025)

Plans only work if they’re current—and tested. Use this checklist to review what matters most: governance and scope, risks and impacts, roles and alternates, communications, operations/IT, facilities and vendors, data/backup integrity, strategies (Plan A/B/C), and testing/improvement. Start where the risk is highest, then schedule a quick tabletop to validate decisions and assumptions.  (Updated 2025)

Are Your Remote Workers "Safe" from Severe Weather and Power Outages?

If the months of January and February are any indication of what the rest of winter will look like, we may suffer many interruptions in power and internet access. In the first part of the month, many areas in Virginia, for example, suffered outages that lasted anywhere from seven hours to five days. As I write this, most of the northeast has just suffered from the impact of blizzard conditions, with power outages and flooding. In the next several days, another large storm is expected to hit the Midwest and New England. 

How to Conduct an Effective Tabletop Exercise

Proactive education and training are essential to maintaining business continuity and preparing for unexpected events. However, even if an organization has a documented business continuity plan, some employees might not know what's in it, or the strategy might never have been tested. Tabletop Exercises from Attainium can help companies gain the knowledge they need to recover and respond to a variety of situations.

Is Your Business Continuity Plan Prepared to Respond to a Ransomware Attack?

Cyberattacks (including ransomware attacks) have been on the rise for the past several years, causing loss of productivity, damage to reputation, and, of course, impact on the bottom line. More than 50% of businesses surveyed in the Sophos Annual Ransomware Survey in 2020 suffered a significant ransomware attack. Globally, ransomware attacks will cost nearly $20 billion in 2021 alone.

Top 6 Effective Tabletop Exercise Scenarios for Business Continuity

Strong business continuity plans only work when they’re tested. Tabletop exercises help teams validate decision-making, communication paths, and real-world recovery strategies before an actual disruption. These six proven scenarios are ideal for strengthening resilience, practicing response under pressure, and identifying gaps that need improvement.

Have You Tried Virtual Tabletop Exercises?

It's time to look around and see what else we should be doing virtually -- for example, training, testing, and exercising your business continuity plan. More than likely, this plan hasn't been exercised for months (at least), and we all know that an untested plan can't be relied on in a crisis. With people still working at home, it's time to think about virtual tabletop exercises in order to ensure that your plan remains viable and up to date.