Grants Management: Corporation for National and Community Service's Grant Monitoring Process Could Be Improved
Highlights
What GAO Found
The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) process for monitoring grants is not fully aligned with federal internal controls (see fig.). Risks may go unidentified because CNCS’s assessment process does not include all grants in the year they are first awarded; its scoring model does not assign the riskiest grants the highest priority for monitoring; and its monitoring of grantees’ oversight of funds passed through by grantees to subrecipients is limited.
Figure 1: Areas for Improvement of Internal Controls in CNCS’s Grant Monitoring Process
Why GAO Did This Study
CNCS administered grants totaling about $750 million in fiscal year 2015 for national service and volunteering, with a mission to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement. This testimony discusses findings from our recent report (GAO-17-90) that compares CNCS's grant monitoring process--as documented in policies, procedures, and plans--against federal standards for internal controls for identifying, analyzing, and responding to risks.
Recommendations
GAO did not make any new recommendations, but reiterated the recommendations made in our recent report (GAO-17-90). In that report, GAO identified a number of ways that CNCS could improve its efforts to move toward a risk-based process for monitoring grantee compliance, such as by ensuring that all grants are assessed for risk and that the riskiest grants are assigned the highest priority for monitoring.