Sneak Preview: Use Team Effort When Drafting Policies, Procedures

(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants 360 article.) Nonfederal entities that are developing or updating their internal policies and procedures documents are advised not to leave this task to one person, but to assemble a team of both fiscal and programmatic personnel within the organization to complete the process, and to ensure that staff are trained on these policies and procedures once implemented, two Washington, D.C.-based attorneys told attendees at the recent National Grants Management Association’s Annual Grants Training conference.

“The continued number one finding that auditors, investigators and lawyers find involves policies and procedures,” Tiffany Kesslar, Esq., partner at Brustein and Manasevit, PLLC, explained. These findings stem from “policies that do not exist, are not current, don’t reflect the entity’s practices, or haven’t been updated or followed.”

The Office of Management and Budget’s uniform guidance requires that financial assistance award recipients have established, written policies and procedures in specific areas. These include having cash management procedures (§200.302(b)(6); §200.305); cost allowability procedures (§200.302(b)(7)); a conflict of interest policy (§200.318(c)); procurement procedures (§200.318(a); §200.319(d)); a method for conducting technical evaluations of proposals and selecting contracts (§200.320(b)(2)(ii)); and a travel policy (§200.475(a)). It also requires that entities have procedures for managing equipment (§200.313(d)) and administering employee benefits (§200.431).

Kesslar said that although the uniform guidance does not specifically require nonfederal entities to have written time and effort policies, she noted that she has recently seen many auditor findings in the area of time and effort based on the auditors’ interpretation of provisions under §200.430(a), Compensation of personal services. Therefore, she suggested that organizations also maintain policies and procedures for time and effort. In addition, although written policies and procedures are not required for record retention, audit resolution and subrecipient monitoring, Kesslar encouraged grant recipients to develop internal policies and procedures discussing these areas.

For example, a policy related to audit findings may address what internal office will take the lead to respond to draft audit findings. “One of the biggest problems we see as lawyers is responses to single audits where the nonfederal entity is just agreeing to the draft audit finding, only to find out later that it actually didn’t agree and that it thought what it was doing was right. You don’t want to agree to something just to sweep it under the rug. It’s important from a policies and procedures perspective to note who is responsible for making these responses.”

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)

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