Compliance Infrastructure

What the Compliance Infrastructure is.

The Compliance Infrastructure is the apparatus that keeps your federal and state grants safe, clean, and audit-ready. It includes internal controls guidance, a Project Director manual customized to your institution, written compliance opinion memos on situations as they arise, training materials for fiscal and project staff, an AI-enhanced compliance reference built on WRD’s nearly 40 years of federal grant experience, and direct WRD support during desk reviews, site visits, and audits.

It applies the requirements of federal grants administration — 2 CFR 200 (the federal Uniform Guidance), program-specific regulations, and funder-specific reporting requirements — to the specific operational reality of your institution.

Why the Compliance Infrastructure exists.

Federal grant compliance failures are expensive, embarrassing, and often discovered only during audits or site visits — long after the failure occurred and long after correction is straightforward. A questioned cost on a single grant can run into six figures. A pattern of deficiencies across grants can produce single-audit findings that affect the institution’s ability to receive future federal funding.

Most colleges and universities cannot justify a full-time compliance specialist with deep federal grant expertise — the volume of active grants does not warrant the headcount, and qualified compliance staff are difficult to hire and retain. The Compliance Infrastructure component is the response: that level of expertise is available to the institution as a system, without the internal hire.

How we work with you.

• Provide project launch orientations to new grant personnel at each award
• Offer ongoing just-in-time consultation on compliance questions as they arise
• Author written compliance opinion memos on specific situations, retained in the institution’s compliance record
• Train fiscal and project staff on grant-specific requirements
• Advise on desk reviews, site visits, and audits as they occur — both before and during
• Maintain the AI-enhanced compliance reference, drawing on WRD’s accumulated federal grant experience
• Author and maintain the institution’s Project Director manual

Where this fits in the WRD Grant Funding System.

Compliance Infrastructure is component 4 of 6 — the implement phase of the grant funding lifecycle. It is consulted during Institutional Narrative Library and Proposal Development (when budgets and methodology need a compliance read before submission), and is carried forward by the Evaluation & Impact Reporting System (which produces the audit-grade evidence reporting the awards require).

Next → Evaluation & Impact Reporting