Creating a Culture of Compliance

At its core, compliance in our social justice world is about creating a strong organization that can stand up to administrative attacks. We get a lot of questions about how groups can stay compliant with systems and authorities that we feel misaligned with, and how staff may push back. There’s a connection between following all federal, state and local rules and regulations and protecting your overall work. Operations and finance folks know this but how do we get the whole organization on board?

When speaking with your staff about compliance, think about what rules must be followed and where there’s flexibility. It can mean recognizing that financial decisions, policies, and procedures may affect people differently. Transparent practices, equitable access to resources, and consistent application of policies help build trust across your organization.

For example, in your credit card program, there really is no way to get around the need for a regular monthly reconciliation of all charges with proper coding and receipts. However, are there systems you can implement to support receipt gathering and coding? Does it make sense to have a prepaid credit card system (definitely still need the coding and receipts) to limit the number of folks having to front their own funds and give them the access they need to do the work? As you look at these different systems and options, be sure to keep the operations staff’s capacity in mind as there may be a parallel need to increase support.

Encourage open dialogue by explaining not only what the rules are, but why they exist. Invite staff to raise concerns and questions that you can discuss together. Create space for folks to be compliant. A good example may be to apportion 5 minutes of an all-staff call to fill out timesheets together and celebrate those completed timesheets! It is our shared responsibility to value and practice organizational compliance to ensure a strong social justice movement. We have lots of tools and draft policies available – please reach out if we can help.