Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank

Finding 2023-01 - Eligibility; Agency Monitoring Federal Program: Emergency Food Assistance-Cluster Federal Agency: United States Department of Agriculture Pass-Through Entity: Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Federal Assistance Listing Number: 10.568, 10.569 Federal Award Year: June 30, 2023 Criteria: Recipient agency must be either a public agency or a private entity possessing tax-exempt status under IRC and must enter into a written agreement with the state agency, or with another recipient agency where permitted, binding it to perform the duties of a recipient agency. Condition: The Food Bank did not obtain and or retain agency monitoring forms for 15 out of our sample of 25. Questioned Costs: There are no questioned costs associated with this finding. Cause: The Food Bank failed to follow its procedures for obtaining agency monitoring forms. Effect: Agencies may not be eligible for distributions. Recommendation: The Food Bank should abide by their written policy and perform a periodic review of the requirements and related procedures to avoid administrative oversight. Management Response: COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies employed by our Food Bank and our partner agencies restricted our ability to directly monitor partner sites. The team responsible for monitoring and compliance also experienced staffing inconsistencies that have since been rectified; the team is now able to monitor at full capacity. Moving forward, new tools and processes for scheduling and tracking agency monitoring will provide better real-time insight into our progress and compliance. Finally, agencies are expected to renew their agreement with our Food Bank at 2023 calendar year-end, which will reassert our monitoring requirements to all partner agencies in our network.

During the Fiscal 2023 financial statement audit, Schneider Downs communicated the following finding from their Uniform Guidance procedures: The Food Bank did not obtain and or retain agency monitoring forms for 15 out of our sample of 25. Our response to the finding was: COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies employed by our Food bank and our partner agencies restricted our ability to directly monitor partner sites. The team responsible for monitoring and compliance also experienced staffing inconsistencies that have since been rectified; the team is now able to monitor at full capacity. Moving forward, new tools and processes for scheduling and tracking agency monitoring will provide better real-time insight into our progress and compliance. Finally, agencies are expected to renew their agreement with our Food Bank at 2024 calendar year-end, which will reassert our monitoring requirements to all partner agencies in our network. Update as of February 23, 2024 The Food Bank has taken the following actions: • The annual contract renewal process has been initiated, including reassertion of our monitoring requirements. • Additional compliance staff have started the regular monitoring process. • A system has been put in place to provide compliance progress updates to the Controller.