Financials and Risk Management
Financial Management
Total income for 2023
The total income in 2023 amounted to EUR 6,629,699 (2022: EUR 8,364,453). AIGHD ends the financial year in 2023 with a loss of EUR 205,642 (2022: loss of EUR 246,942).
Risk Management
We have identified four key risk areas which we discuss further below.
- Financial Risks - Continuity Reserve
- Personnel Risks - Health and Safety of Staff especially when travelling
- Ethical Risks
- IT-related Risks - Security Breaches and Loss of Data
Low Tolerance to Financial Risk
Our financial risk tolerance is low, in that discontinuity or insufficient funding would lead to discontinuity of the foundation. We currently have a continuity reserve that is substantial and currently can fund our core costs for approximately one (1) year. This is expected to be further depleted in 2024, but will still cover 9-10 months operating costs.
However, we want to maintain a minimum balance of six months – and therefore we are managing this risk by exploring cost reductions by sharing costs with Amsterdam University Medical Centre (A-UMC), and our continued support for business development opportunities. With the aim of balancing costs and expenditures by the end of 2025, we are focusing in 2024 on securing memorandums of understanding with all supporting faculties and options for core funding with the A-UMC.
Financial Risk
Personnel Risk
Prioritizing Health and Safety especially when Travelling
AIGHD relies on our staff and researchers to achieve its goals and objectives and consequently our organizational risk tolerance is low. We are committed to responsible human resources management and have enacted policies to safeguard our employees ‘health and safety’. We have approved and implemented a new staff security policy to provide guidelines to help determine the necessity, potential risks, and response protocols in cases of emergencies regarding staff on travelling assignments.
Ethical Conduct of Organizational Members
AIGHDs ‘Code of Conduct’ (CoC) clearly defines inappropriate behavior (including sexual misconduct). AIGHD takes reports of violations of this Code of Conduct very seriously, whether these reports are coming from internal or external parties. The organization strives to handle these reports with the highest duty of care and take appropriate measures. All reports of breach of the Code of Conduct are dealt with in a timely and confidential manner.
Ethical Risk
IT-related Risks
Security Breaches and Data Loss
Data is an important factor in our work and protecting these is a high priority. We contract out our IT services to Pharmaccess Foundation, and they mitigate risks by assigning responsibilities and implementing procedures such as:
- The appointment of the head of IT appointed as a security officer and an (external) Data Protection Officer.
- The adherence to the ICT and Data Policy is continuously monitored.
- Solid IT environment to prevent unwanted access (firewalls, ongoing monitoring, strict user management procedure and password policy, double password identification).
- User actions when data/datasets are accessed and/or altered are audited. Include privacy impact assessment for new projects in kick-off meetings.
- Daily backups with 28-day retention and procedure to monitor proper functioning of the backup system. Yearly backups stored in safe conditions. Synchronization software updates local data to the cloud, allowing recovery of data from lost/broken hardware.