Everything You Need To Know About Employees & Political Donations
US Elections – A Race to the Finish!
As July 4th approaches, so does the intensifying presidential campaign season. It’s impossible to escape the flood of fundraising efforts on every device you own. Campaign fundraising in America has reached a fever pitch, creating a tsunami of texts, commercials, and junk mail flooding everyone’s phones, TVs, and mailboxes.
High-level political campaigns, especially for the presidency, require substantial resources for staff, events, travel, and advertising. A new report from AdImpact predicts that the 2023-24 election cycle will be the most expensive ever, with political spending expected to reach $10.2 billion across broadcast, cable, radio, satellite, and digital outlets. This marks a 13% increase over the previous record of $9.02 billion set during the 2019-2020 election cycle.
Staying Ahead of Regulations
With such vast sums of money being contributed, companies must stay on top of campaign finance laws and regulations, especially regarding employee conflicts of interest (ECOI). Failure to keep systems and employees updated on regulatory changes can be costly, both financially and reputationally.
Managing Peak Donation Periods
Political donations surge every few years during election campaigns, posing significant challenges for compliance teams to remain effective and efficient. Donations to numerous parties and organizations complicate the management of conflicts of interest and compliance issues. Donations via emails, texts, and calls highlight the need for a unified platform to process all transactions with quick detection of excess donations being crucial.
Streamlining Compliance Systems
Comprehensive compliance systems are essential to protect a company from regulatory violations. Each state and some municipalities have varying methods of disclosing contributions, making manual data collection challenging and at risk of errors.
At a recent Compliance Week event, audience statistics underscore these challenges:
- 77% of attendees manually manage political contributions and surveillance
- 55% have no political contributions monitoring
- 55% are most concerned about gifts and entertainment violations, while 33% worry about political contributions violations
Implementing compliance solutions that aggregate political contribution data can streamline both the employee and compliance team experience, reducing risks associated with donations. Daily updates on pre-clearance with the Star’s Political Contribution Surveillance Platform help stay ahead of Employee Conflict of Interest, keeping data organized and responsive. With the right systems, compliance teams can be given alerts associated with concerning donations, enabling swift risk mitigation. When political contributions data is integrated into your compliance system, hosting all transactions in one place, this is the safest way to protect your company.
When Employee Political Donations Become a Business Challenge
