Nonprofit Audit Readiness Assessment
TLDR
Most audit findings come from the same handful of control areas: SEFA reconciliation, time-and-effort certifications, indirect cost documentation, subrecipient monitoring, and procurement file completeness. This 12-question assessment scores you against each of them and routes you to the remediation guide that matches your weakest area.
What This Assessment Reveals
Audit findings, year over year, cluster in the same handful of control areas. The federal Office of Inspector General reports and Single Audit Database flag the same families of issues again and again: missing time-and-effort certifications, undocumented indirect cost charges, unmonitored subrecipients, procurement files without selection memos, and SEFA schedules that don’t reconcile to the general ledger.
This assessment scores your organization against twelve of those areas. It’s designed to be answered by someone who has visibility into both finance and grants - typically a finance director, executive director, or experienced grant manager. The questions take about five minutes.
How the Score Maps to Action
The score lands you in one of three bands:
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Audit-ready (80%+): Documentation, controls, and reporting cadence are in a defensible position. The remediation list focuses on file completeness and the procedural tightening that auditors flag as opportunities for improvement.
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At risk (55-79%): Most controls are in place but specific files or policies have gaps. Most organizations in this band can close the gaps in 60 days if they start now. The remediation list is targeted at the most common at-risk areas: written internal control documentation, subrecipient monitoring files, and time-and-effort coverage.
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Not audit-ready (under 55%): Multiple control areas are unaddressed. Plan on a 90-day remediation sprint with weekly updates to the board’s finance or audit committee. The remediation list starts with the foundational pieces - SEFA, indirect cost basis, written procurement policy - that need to be in place before the rest matters.
Nonprofit Audit Readiness Assessment
An interactive 12-question assessment that scores your audit readiness across SEFA prep, time-and-effort certification, indirect cost documentation, subrecipient monitoring, and internal controls. Delivered by email.
We'll email the resource and a short follow-up sequence. Unsubscribe any time.
- SEFA
- Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards. The required schedule that lists all federal expenditures by CFDA/Assistance Listing number for a fiscal year. Triggers a single audit at the $1M expenditure threshold.
DEFINITION
- Time-and-effort certification
- Personnel activity reports required under 2 CFR 200.430 that document how employees split their time across federal awards. Required semiannually for staff working on a single federal award and each pay period for staff splitting across multiple awards.
DEFINITION
- NICRA
- Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement. A federal cognizant-agency-approved rate that lets the nonprofit charge indirect costs to federal awards at an agreed-upon percentage.
DEFINITION
Q&A
What does an audit readiness assessment evaluate?
It evaluates the documentation, internal controls, and reporting cadence that auditors examine first. The 12-area assessment covers SEFA prep, time-and-effort, indirect cost rate documentation, subrecipient monitoring, written policies, segregation of duties, drawdowns, procurement files, board financial oversight, prior findings resolution, FFATA reporting, and policy currency.
Frequently asked