How Teach For All Maintained 100% Grant Compliance, Diversified Its Revenue Streams, and Drove Sustainable Growth

Around the world, millions of children lack the education, support, and opportunity they need to thrive. The obstacles they face—poverty, hunger, discrimination, trauma, and broken school systems are overwhelming.

And when millions of children aren’t learning, it affects us all—perpetuating poverty, dividing societies, and weakening economies and communities across the globe.

To combat this inequity, the Teach For All network works to drive sustainable change by developing leaders who are firmly rooted in their local community and believe in the potential of all children.

As Teach For All’s global organization began to grow, like all nonprofits, they needed more funding to further their mission. This led them to seek U.S. government funding. But in order to service federal funding correctly, leaders needed to rethink their time-keeping processes.

Challenges: Preparing for Audits

Because U.S. Government Funding has stringent documentation requirements, Teach For All needed a system of internal control to provide reasonable assurance that their time-entry data was accurate, allowable, and properly allocated to achieve grant compliance.

Chief Financial Officer Srihari Prabhu explains, “To remain good fiscal stewards, we knew we needed a better time-entry system that could help us achieve 100% grant compliance.”

With the right controls in place, the team could service their U.S. government funding confidently and prove to auditors that they were in compliance beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The Finance team knew a solution with internal controls like timesheet validations would only help them during an audit. For example, features like timesheet attestations could ensure employees formally confirmed their submissions, and audit logs could make sure every save, edit, and deletion of data was traceable.

Managing Time Entry Data in Disparate Systems

Prior to receiving their first federal grant, employees tracked work hours in Excel and emails, effectively siloing data and making it time-consuming for the Finance team to compile and assess.

It also was confusing for staff to give attestations and time assessments over email, as it was harder for them to see their prior month’s allocations. To support the new source of funding, modernizing this process would be essential.

Prabhu comments, “We were paying a price in terms of efficiency. Having our time-entry data stored in Excel and communicating via email was inefficient, increased administrative overhead, and made errors far more likely.”

By implementing a cloud-based time-tracking solution, the Finance team could access a single source of truth, one that ensured all time-entry data was centralized and easily collated for auditing purposes.

Allocating and Reporting on Work Hours for Grant Compliance

Teach For All also knew they needed to properly allocate employee time to specific funding sources at a granular level.

For example, the nonprofit required documentation to show precisely how employee work hours were logged to either a funding source, grant, or subcomponent.

Prabhu says, “We were at a point where allocations were becoming more complicated as we were managing a wide variety of restricted funding, all with different rules. We had restricted funding from the U.S. Government, European Commission, corporates, foundations, and individuals. We needed to make the move to a time-keeping system that could help us record every data point with precision.”

Once time-entry data was logged, the nonprofit also needed to run reports showing both employee work hours and the percentage breakdown of all activities, whether they were federally funded or not.

Prabhu explains, “We needed to roll up our time allocations to each funding source to effectively comply with all accounting practices and procedures.”

Implementing a Pilot Program

Knowing stringent requirements were ahead, Teach For All decided to implement a more formal time-tracking platform, one that would ensure all data tracked was consistent and traceable. After much research, they reached out to ClickTime.

The initial implementation started as a pilot program. Only workers who needed to track time to the U.S. Government funding began logging hours in ClickTime, but almost immediately, the finance team noticed an increase in efficiency.

Prabu comments, “ClickTime has a lot of useful features that our Finance team quickly noticed and benefitted from. For example, time entry completion reports informed us which employees were late in their submissions.”

It didn’t take long for ClickTime’s pilot program to prove successful, and the team realized that if they wanted to continue to access grants with more complicated audit requirements, they needed to roll out ClickTime company-wide.

The team’s objectives were clear:

• Eliminate siloed time-entry data by investing in ClickTime’s cloud-based time-tracking solution.
• Maintain accurate and complete time-keeping records for stringent audit requirements.
• Precisely allocate employee time to funding sources, grants, or subcomponents.

Prabhu comments, “We were excited to implement ClickTime throughout the organization. We knew it would ensure we remained compliant, build a more rigorous time-tracking process, and simultaneously increase our efficiency.”

Solutions: Systemically Implementing ClickTime

Once Teach For All implemented ClickTime organization-wide, they immediately began to collect better, cleaner time-entry data that supported their system of record.

With ClickTime’s user-friendly interface, it became easy for employees to log time to either a funding source, grant, or subcomponent correctly.

And with all of their time-entry data housed in one system, managers could easily monitor employee submissions and provide the Finance team with visibility.

Prabhu comments, “It became simple for us to spot any time-entry mistakes. We could quickly look at a submission and understand at a glance whether the hours logged made sense or not.”

The Finance team especially appreciated ClickTime’s time completeness features, which saved them the chore of reaching out to every employee who was late submitting their timesheets.

Prabhu says, “We really appreciate the Automatic Timesheet Reminder Notifications. It prompts employees without us ever having to get involved.”

Efficiently Allocating Work Hours

In addition, the allocation process became much more efficient. With ClickTime, Teach For All could now easily allocate time entry data to specific funding sources. For auditing purposes, they could now prove all time-entry data had been properly categorized and maintained.

Prabhu says, “Time allocations concretely tie an employee’s effort to the results and impact of our donor’s funding. During an audit, we need to show that data to maintain compliance.”

Further, Teach For All could now access past allocations over different periods (e.g., by month or by years), which provided a sound historical record, helping them measure and quantify their work.

Prabhu says, “ClickTime allows me to view historical data with ease, enabling me to look back on years worth of allocations.”

Easily Accessing Grant Allocation Reports

With ClickTime’s out-of-the-box Grant Allocation Report, the team could now easily show how employee time was distributed across funding sources, grants, and subcomponents.

Moreover, the report clearly displayed both employee hours and the percentage of their total worked time. Prabhu comments, “The Grant Allocation Report made our documentation process much more efficient. We were really happy with its capabilities.”

Results: Achieving 100% Grant Compliance

Once Teach For All rolled out ClickTime company-wide, it didn’t take long for them to start realizing measurable benefits. Impressively, they sailed through their first Single Audit, which involved a rigorous audit of U.S. Government funding.

Prabhu raves, “We went through our first Single Audit, resulting in zero findings and no suggestions for improvement. You just can’t achieve that without a great time-tracking system that your Finance team can rely on.”

Celebrating a Growing Team

Armed with the confidence that they could now meet any grant reporting requirements, the team knew their future would be bright.

Prabhu recalls, “We went from an organization with almost no restricted funding to one managing over 25 restricted grants, and it keeps growing.”

Now that the team can manage more grants, it allows for the organization to pursue more diverse sources of funding both to enable growth and create a more sustainable revenue base.

Prabhu comments, “Before using ClickTime, we had about 30-40 users logging time to restricted grants. Today, we have over 100. Our staff involved in restricted funding has essentially tripled.”

Making Time Tracking Easy

Moreover, now Teach For All maintains a single source of truth that is simple to use and makes employee lives easier.

Prabhu says, “Our Finance team needs administrative tasks to be as simple and efficient as possible. At the same time, we need a high standard of rigor in our timekeeping. ClickTime helps us meet both of these needs.”

Gaining Back Time

The team also gained significant time back in terms of overhead when they no longer needed to struggle with outdated time-keeping practices.

Because far less effort was spent reminding staff to submit or adjust timesheets, the Finance team could spend more time reviewing the entries. This helped them spot allocation issues earlier, saving the organization time and money in the long run.

Prabhu comments, “With ClickTime, our organization probably saves about ~20 full workdays every year on administrative tasks.”

After rolling out ClickTime company-wide, the Finance team realized its effectiveness and witnessed how it could revolutionize their time-keeping practices and enhance compliance.

With the right time-tracking tool at their disposal, they became empowered to service more grants with confidence, furthering their mission.