Scrutiny of Nonprofits with Regard to Procurement and Vendor Management Practices is Growing Fast

Nonprofit organizations rely on vendors for a wide variety of mission critical business processes and activities. High profile problems related to cybersecurity breaches and conflicts of interest in procurements are highlighting the need for more disciplined vendor management in the nonprofit sector.

In addition, there has been a significant increase in regulations regarding procurement and vendor oversight that is also impacting certain segments of the nonprofit sector. Regulations such as the OMB’s Uniform Guidance and CMS’s Medicare Advantage requirements for managing vendors are requiring thousands of nonprofit organizations to strengthen their procurement policies, procedures and controls, and ongoing oversight of their vendor relationships.

Boards, funding and regulatory agencies, large donors and even the public are increasingly interested in how nonprofits are buying goods and services and, more importantly, how they are managing ongoing costs, compliance, risk and performance with their vendors.

They want more than an ad hoc approach; they want discipline in vendor management.

How VendorRisk Can Help

VendorRisk is an easy-to-use, cloud-based vendor management software solution. It will help your nonprofit organization strengthen controls and centralize all of your important activities for managing vendor contracts, performance and compliance.

Create a Central View of All Your Vendors

Track and manage a wide variety of information including contacts, vendor segmentation, risk levels, compliance requirements and a variety of vendor-related documents like attestation and non-disclosure (NDA) agreements. Monitor important activities with each of your vendors - all in one, central location. Add in subrecipients.

Manage all of your Contracts and Statements of Work

Store all of your vendor contracts in one place. Track master service agreements and statements of work. Set contract expiration dates and receive automated alerts before contracts renew or expire.

Formally Onboard Vendors and Assess Risk

Automate and simplify the collection of onboarding information from your vendors like W-9s, insurance certificates and audit reports through our online portal. Create oversight plans for strategic and high-risk vendors based on segmentation. Assign roles, responsibilities and frequency for vendor management activities. Identify and manage your most critical vendors by assigning risk levels. Establish ongoing diligence and risk management activities. Automate the scheduling of diligence and risk reviews.

Track and Report on Vendor Regulatory Compliance

Identify and track vendors requiring compliance oversight including subrecipients, first-tier downstream and related entity vendors (FDRs) and third-party outsourced service providers. Collect audit reports, attestation agreements and other documentation required for these vendors. Assign and manage compliance activities.

Score and Improve Vendor Performance

Know how well your vendors are performing by conducting performance reviews. Design questions and scoring criteria based on your unique requirements. Request and collect reviews electronically. Proactively identify and resolve problems with your vendors, and build a history of vendor performance.

Automate Competitive Bidding and Quoting Events

Create and facilitate competitive bids and quotes directly from VendorRisk. Automate the process to distribute RFPs, receive proposals and score prospective vendors. Track inclusion of small, minority and women owned businesses (SMWBE) in the solicitation process.