General Conference Auditing Services (GCAS) is rolling out a new Report to Governance (RTG) for Planned Giving & Trust Services (PGTS) Operations. This new report replaces the current two reports: Review of Trust Operations and Summary of Trust Operations, collectively making up the GCAS reports issued for an organization’s Trust Review.
In the old reports, you had to read a lengthy paragraph to determine what was out of compliance. And the findings were spread out over multiple pages, making it a challenge to get the big picture of how an organization was doing in following policy. Gone are these lengthy deficiency descriptions that stated working policy only to be followed by a recommendation that essentially said: “just follow policy.”
RTG Format
The new Report to Governance, commonly referred to as an RTG, is a streamlined report. In the RTG, there is a condensed review of findings that is easy to read and places all the deficiencies on one or two pages. The standard or working policy that was not followed is stated succinctly, and there is a clear description of the finding.
If you are familiar with the RTG for the financial audit, you will recognize this new report for the trust review. The two reports are very similar in appearance, which will help more people in an organization read and understand the report for the planned giving and trust services department.
You will notice there is not much clutter in the RTG. The pages are much more concise, which makes them much simpler to read. Each report page is nicely organized, well-labeled, and colorful to make it easy to find the information you are looking for.
Executive Summary
The report even makes it easy for the officers of an organization to quickly see the information that is important to them in the Executive Summary. Here you will find information such as how many PGTS certified personnel the organization has, the number of findings in the report, the dollar amount of assets managed, fiduciary trends, and total maturities going back five years. There are graphic representations of the various metrics to make it easier for the information to be understood quickly.
RTG Implementation
The RTG report will be used for all trust reviews with the year ending 2020. Consequently, most trust reviews from now on will use this new report. Organizations that still have trust reviews for the year ending 2019 will see the old reports. For an example of this new report, click here.