Safeguarding whistle-blowers

The whistle-blower provision of SOX is among two provisions on the Act that applies to all organizations, like nonprofits (see the following section to figure out the other SOX provision that applies to nonprofits). SOX tends to make it a federal crime for any entity to retaliate against personnel who report facts about fraud or suspected economic misconduct inside the organization. The Urban Institute study identified that amongst nonprofits with at the least one particular employee, 67 percent had a formal course of action for staff to report complaints devoid of worry of retaliation.
 

Stopping the shreddersA different provision of SOX that applies to all organizations (like nonprofits) tends to make it a federal crime to alter or destroy documents so as to avoid their use in an official proceeding (see the preceding section “Protecting whistleblowers” to discover out the other SOX provision that applies to nonprofits). SOX does not especially call for organizations to possess a written document-retention policy, but most organizations implement such policies as a precaution and to demonstrate a commitment to complying with SOX.