NGOs often lack evidence-based tools to determine how much they should invest in security risk management (SRM). Without clear financial metrics, security specialists might struggle to demonstrate SRM’s economic value, leading to perceptions of security as a cost burden rather than a strategic enabler.

This framing paper explores the development of a return on investment (ROI) model to help organisations quantify SRM costs and benefits. The proposed unified framework adopts a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative tracking of baseline and incident-related costs with qualitative insights that help translate intangible benefits into proxy monetary values towards a simple ROI calculation. By combining these elements, the approach provides a more balanced and credible way of assessing SRM’s value for NGO executive leadership and decision-making.

The approach reflects a work-in-progress methodology that will be further defined, piloted and refined alongside a small cohort of NGOs from GISF’s membership.

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