Online tools and process ease the burden of extensive international compliance
Perhaps one of the most pressing issues for grantmakers today is compliance. Faced with uncertainty, a lack of clear-cut guidelines and evolving legislation, many grantmakers are turning to their technology partners for answers. And the good news is that there are now readily available, practical and cost-effective solutions to ease compliance checking (see "Seeking a Safe Harbor" article from Foundation News for more information). For example, using MicroEdge corporate giving solutions, Alcoa structured a new online grantmaking process that fully automates and streamlines their due diligence process. A global corporation with over 200 remote offices in 30 countries, Alcoa's compliance process was challenging, at best. Each business unit location had to assemble compliance data and perform analysis-extremely time consuming work that often entailed an in-depth understanding of tax compliance. And for a global corporation such as Alcoa, evolving compliance regulations further obscured matters. By implementing the MicroEdge online solution, business unit locations no longer have to collect, interpret or provide any compliance related information. 501(c) determination is automated and IRS data instantly updates in their organization records, contributing to improved data integrity.

Another change to their compliance process, Alcoa now outsources their compliance work to a third-party service provider. In doing so they utilized GIFTS to establish a seamless process that automatically creates and emails the work requisitions to their provider. All compliance documents are returned in electronic format and attached directly to the grant records, producing a full audit trail within GIFTS.

To that end, we've given up the requirement for handwritten signatures on everything, but with a more seamless compliance process in place, it's a compromise we have been willing to accept. —Carol Greco, database analyst for Alcoa Foundation

And others are following suit. Mellon Financial Corporation is also using MicroEdge solutions to facilitate a high volume of compliance checking, particularly with respect to their matching gifts program, which makes a considerable number of donations to thousands of organizations-many with international programs.

Following up the OFAC guidelines we had to have something in place for our grants program, especially our matching gifts program. At the Bank we have Worldcheck, but we wanted to have a solution that has true interoperability with GIFTS —Doreen Tumminello, Foundation Manager