Financials & risk management
Financial management
Total income for 2024
AIGHD's total income for 2024 amounted to €11,313,041 (2023: €6,629,699). AIGHD ended the 2024 financial year with a loss of €250,658 (2023: loss of €205,642).
After appropriation, AIGHD's reserves amount to €1,564,113, which is sufficient to cover 12 months of running costs.
Risk management
AIGHD has identified eight risk areas, which we discuss below.
- Strategic
- External
- Business development
- Project execution
- Finance
- Human resources
- Safety & wellbeing
- IT & data
With AIGHD running at a loss and the outcome of business development investments uncertain, achieving our strategic goals is under pressure.
Mitigation: AIGHD is investigating the transfer of our operations to the Amsterdam UMC to significantly reduce overheads while preserving our strengths, including interdisciplinarity and international project management. A careful process has been set up for this, in close cooperation with the various parties involved.
Strategic
External
Political and societal attention is shifting away from major global health issues. Funding access will suffer from increased competition due to the significantly reduced availability of program and research funding in the US and Europe.
Mitigation: Business development will adjust its activities to seek funding from philanthropy, foundations, and the private sector, while ensuring that no (potential) conflicts of interest arise. AIGHD will also enhance its visibility through, for instance, continuous active participation in the Dutch Global Health Hub.
AIGHD's pipeline of new grants is running low due to limited focus on business development in the past.
Mitigation: In mid-2024, AIGHD started investing heavily in business development and the quality of research proposals. However, the result remains uncertain as long lead times mean we are unlikely to know whether applications will be granted before the end of 2025.
Business development
Project execution
As the requirements for project accounting grow increasingly complex, more resources are needed to comply with them.
Mitigation: AIGHD prides itself on careful project management by experienced project managers familiar with interdisciplinary projects involving different international cooperation partners. In 2024, we improved our financial and time accounting to better comply with tightened donor requirements.
Due to a decrease in the number of projects and therefore project revenues, AIGHD has fewer resources to cover costs, affecting our liquidity.
Mitigation: AIGHD actively strives to reduce costs by hiring fewer staff and outsourcing functions such as financial administration and ICT. We conduct timely reviews of liquidity, liabilities, and risks to intervene early. In 2025, we aim to substantially reduce overhead costs by transferring our operations to the Amsterdam UMC (as described under strategic risks).
Finance
Personnel
The intended transfer of AIGHD's operations to the Amsterdam UMC could impact employees as the working environment would change, and some may lose their jobs, all set against a lengthy period of uncertainty.
Mitigation: Employees will be actively informed through staff meetings and involved in decisions throughout the process. Employee participation takes place through an Advisory Team that the Executive Board regularly consults. Nevertheless, uncertainty cannot be entirely avoided, as it will take time to reach a well-informed decision.
AIGHD relies on staff and researchers to achieve our goals and objectives, and therefore seeks to safeguard employees' health and safety.
Mitigation: AIGHD's Code of Conduct and Whistleblower policy clearly define inappropriate behavior. The organization takes reports of violations of these documents very seriously, whether they originate from internal or external parties. The organization strives to handle reports with the highest duty of care, in a timely and confidential manner, and take appropriate measures, should it be necessary. AIGHD operates an anti-fraud and bribery policy for all employees and external parties related to the organisation. It also has an extended travel policy and travel insurance in place.
Safety & wellbeing
IT & data
Data is a crucial element of AIGHD's work, and as such, security breaches and data loss pose a significant risk.
Mitigation: We contract our IT services to PharmAccess Foundation, and they mitigate risks by assigning responsibilities and implementing procedures such as:
- Appointing the head of IT as a security officer and an (external) Data Protection Officer.
- Continuously monitoring adherence to the ICT and Data Policy.
- Maintaining a solid IT environment to prevent unwanted access (firewalls, ongoing monitoring, strict user management procedure, and double password identification).
- Auditing user actions when data/datasets are accessed and/or altered, and including a privacy impact assessment for new projects in kick-off meetings.
- Daily backups with 28-day retention and procedures to monitor the proper functioning of the backup system. Yearly backups are stored in safe conditions. Synchronization software updates local data to the cloud, allowing recovery of data from lost/broken hardware.