The purpose of a compliance assessment is to determine whether an organization meets its current legal, contractual or voluntarily adapted obligations.
You also want to establish whether it manages compliance well.
An additional objective could be to identify areas where the organization will be non-compliant in the near future.
Identifying areas where it is non-compliant is an important task as non-compliance could lead to a heavy fine, a loss of income from grant-makers or customers or even endanger the existence of the organization.
The process will focus on
- Quality of Compliance Management system
- Compliance with legal, contractual and voluntarily adopted obligations.
How to conduct the assessment
The assessment could be done by means of interviews, questionnaires or a checklist.
You will find numerous assessments tools published online that focus on a specific compliance issue (e.g. human rights, grant conditions, environmental regulations).
I am not aware of any assessment that could be directly used by an NGO to assess its compliance. You will most likely have to develop your own questionnaire or checklist according to the specific to your nonprofit.