North Carolina hands out hundreds of millions of dollars to non-profit organizations each year but fails to adequately keep track of the money, according to a legislative report released Monday.
The legislature's Program Evaluation Division reported that the state awarded $694 million in state and federal funds to non-profits during the 2007-2008 fiscal year. Although there are regulations and laws governing the money's use, they don't require sufficient documentation, don't adequately focus on programs' performance, fail to generate timely reports and lack sufficient enforcement.
More than a quarter of the grant recipients who receive $500,000 or less were not required to file documentation on how they spent their money, according to the report.
The division's recommendations included: changing state law to require performance-based contracting, program monitoring plans and more timely and accurate reporting; emphasizing competitive grant awards and stopping payment to grant recipients who are on the state budget office's suspension list.
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Re: Grants short on accountability
Odd. I can't help but scratch my head... The Minority has been after these obscure funding area that once included 8,500 "Non-Governmental Organizations" since the salad days of the late Senator Ham Horton. I recall a debate with then-Senator Frank Ballance over an amendment Ham Horton offered, to the Senate budget in 2000. Horton sought to deny funding for any of the NGO's that were out of compliance with already-required accounting for more than 18 months. Ballance, who it would later be revealed, was ilegally dipping into his own little NGO launderette & "P.O. Box" NGO would later go to jail. Thomas Wright came close to the same practice, and some present legislators are professional NGO "executive" grant-seekers.
The question today, I suppose, is why they are looking in this direction now? Probably because they want the money for other things. Will they go after their friends or the fire departments?