The word “compliance” can be a source of frustration in any organisation, but it doesn’t need to be! Some organisations like banks have full divisions dedicated to managing compliance, but as a not-for-profit, the burden of compliance likely falls on a select few people. Don’t be overwhelmed! In this article, we want to talk about ways to help you streamline processes and use automation to reduce the burden of compliance on your organisation. In the face of ever-growing compliance obligations, finding the space to breathe is more important than ever.
Prepare
Compliance will look different for any organisation as compliance is dependent on external and internal factors. To find out what compliance means to your organisation, follow our three easy steps.
- Identify the specific internal actions performed by volunteers
- Identify rules and regulations
- Plan policy and procedures
Step 1: Identify the specific internal actions performed by volunteers
The internal environment, being the actions carried out by your organisation regularly, will determine the organisation-specific compliance issues. To determine which compliance issues are specific to your organisation, you will need to consider the actions that commonly occur in your organisation. We have provided a list of common compliance issues to get you started
- Do your volunteers work with children?
- Are your volunteers required to drive?
- Do you have vehicles that require specific licences?
- Are your volunteers handling any dangerous materials?
- Are there specific volunteer tasks that might require additional caution or restrictions?
- Is there a requirement for volunteers to be vaccinated?
- Do your volunteers require First Aid or CPR certificates?
Step 2: Identify Rules and Regulations
The external environment in which your organisation operates will determine the relevant external rules and regulations required to remain compliant. To determine the relevant external policies take some time to consider any
- Federal rules and regulations
- State rules and regulations; and
- Local rules and regulations
It is important to consider which policies are relevant to all organisations in your region and whether you must be aware of any not-for-profit-specific regulations.
Did you know? It is common for volunteers and volunteer-led organisations to still need to comply with Work Health and Safety Acts
Step 3: Plan Policy and Procedures
Once you understand the external and internal rules and regulations that must be followed to remain compliant, you can plan your organisation’s compliance policies and procedures.
The development of policies and procedures is a key way to reduce compliance risks, reduce unethical and unlawful practices, promote a healthy environment and maintain a positive public image.
A common procedure to manage compliance is through collecting relevant licences, blue cards (WWCC) or police clearances. As many volunteering organisations discovered during the rapidly changing environment of vaccination requirements for volunteers, it isn’t always easy to collect and maintain these records.
When planning policy and procedures, you will likely find that each action performed by your company will have an associated risk and each risk will have an associated policy or procedure. Using the actions previously discussed, this can be seen:
| Action | Risk | Policy or procedure |
| Working with Children | Child safety | Blue Card |
| Driving | Unlawful driving | Driver’s licence |
| Sorting second-hand materials | Tetanus infection | Vaccination |
| Physical activity | Injury | First Aid |
Implement
Once the planning stage is complete, it is time to implement the policies and procedures. The implementation of the procedure for onboarding a new volunteer will require the volunteer to provide a list of documents, for example, your organisation may require:
✅Blue Card
✅First Aid Certificate
✅CPR Certificate
✅Driver’s Licence
✅Conflict of interest questionnaire
✅Trauma response training
Volunteers must gather this information and apply for any required licences/certificates before attending their first activity. We suggest putting this information in your volunteer application to ensure all volunteers are prepared once onboarded.
⭐Volaby Tip: Tasks are the perfect place to collect compliance documents for volunteers. Required tasks must be completed in the volunteer application process to ensure volunteers are prepared before joining their first activity. You can include attachment tasks for copies of licences and certificates, quiz tasks for training, and multiple-choice tasks for questionnaires. If you have volunteers that perform different roles in your organisation, such as driving, you can assign tasks to these roles to ensure volunteers only provide the necessary information.
Rules and regulations will require some documents to be sighted and some documents to be stored (in a physical or digital format). While you may be compliant with what documentation you have collected, you must also be compliant with how it is stored. We encourage you to take the time to consider what you must collect, versus what is nice to have. More than ever, people are more conscious of what information they share with who, and you don’t want your document request to be a barrier to volunteering.
Ensure you keep up to date with legislation for businesses in your state, understand the risks of collecting and storing personal information and impose strict risk management training and processes for all members of your organisations.
⭐Volaby Tip: Volaby supports the secure storage of volunteer information, which is all stored in onshore databases. Information can be uploaded directly to Volaby which minimises risk as information is not being sent via e-mail with the risk of interception. Volaby also has strict access requirements allowing only approved personnel to view volunteer information.
Monitor
The biggest challenge with compliance is the need for ongoing attention. Compliance is not something you can set and forget, documents expire, training needs to be updated, and rules and regulations are a constantly changing maze.
To reduce the burden of compliance on your organisation, it is important to have a system for auditing and updating documents to maintain compliance. While it may be possible to ask volunteers to stay up to date on licences, certificates and training, it is important to remember that volunteers are giving up their time to help your organisation make an impact. Where possible, you want to reduce the administrative work required by volunteers.
An automated system is the most effective way of ensuring all volunteers have completed the required compliance tasks. This way you will be able to see which volunteers have not provided specific documents and which volunteers have documents or training that have expired and needs to be renewed or refreshed.
⭐Volaby Tip: Volaby’s Task feature is a great way to manage the collection and storage of compliance documents and this feature has undergone a significant change recently making compliance that much easier. The new Task Management feature allows administrators to see all tasks requiring approval and incomplete tasks in one place. The feature allows you to set tasks with an expiring frequency allowing you, for example, to set yearly training tasks which will prompt volunteers to redo the task when it has expired. Finally, Volaby allows you to set an expiration date on specific tasks such as licences. When the date is reached, the volunteer will be prompted to provide a new copy of the document.
Current trends toward ethical practices and increasing pressures from regulatory bodies suggest that the level of compliance required will not be easing any time soon. It is important to lean on comprehensive policies and procedures as well as automation where possible to reduce the burden of compliance on your organisation. By being prepared, implementing good practices and continuous monitoring to stay up to date you can significantly decrease the time spent on compliance giving yourself and your team the space to breathe.