Virtual Dialogues on CSR Compliance
Background
The recent amendments to the CSR Rules, 2014 and Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 have opened up several avenues for non-profits to engage with corporations and mandated new requirements for CSR compliance. Sattva believes these changes to be a good opportunity for all non-profit organisations to check their overall level of compliance with respect to the older CSR provisions and the new CSR amendments, and reflect on their institutional readiness for CSR funding.
Sattva hosted a webinar to help non-profits navigate CSR compliance requirements, enabling NGOs to potentially leverage CSR engagement to create impact. The webinar discussed the role of CSR amendments and CSO in achieving SDGs from a government lens, philosophy behind the CSR law amendments, and key areas of CSR compliance with a focus on statutory and legal requirements, finance and accounting, and planning and reporting.
The webinar was facilitated by Srikrishna Sridhar Murthy, Co-founder and CEO of Sattva Consulting, along with:
– Dr. Muniraju – deputy advisor for Niti Aayog, who spoke about CSR compliance from the perspective of the government
– Nikhil Pant – former Chief Programme Executive at National Foundation for CSR, Ministry of Corporate Affairs who was also involved in the formulation of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as per Section 135, Companies Act 2013 legislation and
– Parth Joshi – founder of Arvaksha Consultants OPC Pvt Ltd and an expert in finance, operations, and compliance, who brought in a perspective on the best practices of financial compliance and planning and reporting.
The key highlights of the webinar were:
– Compliance is a means to strengthen and build NGOs capacity and organisational capabilities
– The new CSR amendments place a strong emphasis on impact assessment and reporting, which shifts the focus of NGOs and CSR to a more outcome oriented approach
– Creating a stronger impact and a more streamlined system of reporting and accountability could draw more funding into the sector
– The SDGs are a shared responsibility to be achieved through partnerships between communities, corporates, non-profit organisations and the government
– CSR laws now stress on reporting and spending. NGOs need to synchronise their grant cycle with the financial year cycle to best plan their compliance.
Sattva also provided NGOs with a CSR compliance self assessment tool as a precursor to the webinar, which can be accessed here. Upon answering the questions on the tool, you will receive a score indicating your organisation’s level of CSR compliance and readiness.
The presentation from the session be accessed here:
The recording from the webinar can be accessed here.
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Do click on the ‘Download’ link on the right side of the page for the presentation from the session.
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With a view to address some of the common challenges and queries raised by the audience during the discussion, we have consolidated a list of FAQs addressing specific case situations:
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As a follow up to the Virtual Dialogue on CSR compliance for NGOs, Sattva hosted a two-hour long closed masterclass for a group of 30 small NGOs. The session was led by Parth Joshi, founder of Arkvaksha Consultants and an expert in finance, operations, compliance & cadence, policies & documentation, taxation and company law, among many others.
The masterclass covered:
– Project level finance with a deep dive into the travel, procurement and human resources cost heads. Cost heads were tied to templates that NGOs could use as reference to frame their own procedure and policies.
– Organisational level compliance, including a walk-through of the latest IT forms and rules.
After each segment of the session, the masterclass delved into an interactive 30 minute Q&A session with the participants on the relevant topics.
You can access the presentation here and the webinar recording here.
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Stay tuned for Sattva’s upcoming focused engagements.
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Sattva engages with partner non profit organisations that aim to help them capacity build and strengthen on-ground impact. For any questions or to empanel your organisation on to our central partner network, please write to us at centralpartnernetwork@sattva.co.in.
