Claromentis CEO, Nigel Davies, was recently featured in a Charities Management magazine article on why consistency is mission-critical for charity compliance. He argues that scattered systems create compliance gaps and lost accountability. The solution is a joined-up digital workplace that gives charities one source of truth for policies, training records, and critical processes.
A breach doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be a slow bleed; death by a thousand cuts.
When charities rely on a mix of shared drives, emailed PDFs, third-party training sites, and localized incident form spreadsheets, there can be hundreds, if not thousands of potential points of failure.
Individually, none of these tools are a problem. But together, they create a fog where accountability goes to hide.
Layer in dispersed teams, high volunteer turnover, and the necessary autonomy of local services, and gaps start to appear. Maybe a safeguarding policy doesn’t get read, a refresher course isn’t completed, or a reminder was missed in someone's already full inbox.
With a disparate, patchwork of systems there is too much to track, and too many moving parts. At some point, something is bound to break.
Regulators and funders increasingly look not just at whether a charity has rules, but whether those rules actually work in practice. A policy that sits unread doesn't get enforced. Training that isn't tracked might as well not exist.
Reputational damage travels fast, too. Beneficiaries and supporters expect standards to be upheld everywhere, whether someone is a full-time employee or a volunteer who helps out on Saturday mornings.
If you don’t adhere to these standards, people won’t trust you. And they will provide less time and resources to help your mission.
Nigel argues that charities don’t need more bureaucracy and that the right thing should be the easy thing to do. That means:
This approach not only benefits charity boards and leadership, but respects volunteers’ time by enabling volunteers to securely access everything they need at anytime, anywhere and on any device.
As Nigel aptly puts it: “Compliance will never be glamorous. But, it can be humane, efficient, and deeply protective of your mission”.
Ensuring you have a joined-up digital workplace like Claromentis is not an end in itself. But it does provide the quiet capabilities, frameworks and connections required to maintain trust and provide consistent services to your beneficiaries.
Read Nigel's full article in Charities Management magazine.
If your policies, training, and processes are scattered across too many systems, let’s have a chat. Book a discovery call and we'll show you how our unified digital workplace can help you close the gaps.