Most development and humanitarian funding now reaches communities through chains of intermediaries: local NGOs, community-based organisations, consortium members, suppliers and cash-transfer agents. Each link carries risk that the funding organisation still owns. Weak partner controls lead to disallowed costs, sanctions exposure, diversion of aid and safeguarding failures, while overly heavy vetting slows delivery and pushes capable local organisations away. Getting the balance right has become a core competence for any organisation that passes on donor money or relies on outsourced delivery.

The Third-Party Due Diligence and Implementing-Partner Compliance Training Course follows the partner relationship from first contact to closeout. Participants start with risk appetite and third-party mapping, then work through integrity screening, ownership checks and organisational capacity assessment covering governance, financial management, procurement, safeguarding and data protection. The middle of the week covers risk rating, mitigation measures and the compliance terms that belong in partner and sub-award agreements. The closing sessions deal with ongoing assurance: monitoring visits, spot checks, audits, incident reporting, investigations and decisions to suspend or exit a partnership. Principles from ISO 37001 on business associate due diligence and the Core Humanitarian Standard are used to frame proportionate practice.

Teaching is built on realistic partner files, screening results and agreement extracts. Participants assess sample organisations, debate risk ratings in groups and draft the documents their own teams need, leaving with a tested approach they can apply at their next partner onboarding.

On completing the programme, participants will be able to:

• Map an organisation's third parties and segment them into risk tiers that set the depth of due diligence.
• Conduct integrity checks covering sanctions lists, politically exposed persons, beneficial ownership and adverse media.
• Assess a partner's governance, financial management, procurement, safeguarding and data protection capacity.
• Assign a defensible partner risk rating and select proportionate mitigation measures.
• Draft compliance, audit-access and flow-down clauses for partner and sub-award agreements.
• Plan monitoring visits, spot checks and audits that match each partner's risk profile.
• Manage red flags, incident reports and suspected fraud through to resolution or exit.

Participants typically work where funds, goods or services pass through partners and suppliers, for example:

• Grants managers and sub-award officers in NGOs and UN agencies
• Partnership and localisation coordinators
• Compliance, risk and ethics officers
• Finance managers and internal auditors overseeing partner spending
• Procurement and supply chain officers vetting vendors
• Safeguarding and PSEA focal points
• Programme and country directors approving partnerships
• Foundation and donor staff conducting pre-award assessments
• Anti-bribery and corporate compliance staff in companies that use agents and distributors

By the final session, each participant will have:

• A third-party risk tiering matrix with screening requirements for each tier.
• A partner capacity assessment tool they have tested on a sample organisation.
• Model clauses for audit rights, safeguarding, anti-fraud and sanctions compliance in partner agreements.
• A risk-based monitoring plan setting the frequency of visits, spot checks and audits.
• A red-flag escalation pathway linking programme, finance and compliance teams.
• Practical judgement on when to build a partner's capacity and when to walk away.

Learning is anchored in the documents and decisions that partner compliance teams handle every week:

• Short briefings on each stage of the partner lifecycle, followed by immediate practice
• Mock partner files containing registration papers, financial statements, policies and audit letters
• Live screening exercises using publicly available sanctions and ownership sources
• Role-plays of capacity assessment interviews and difficult conversations about findings
• Clause-drafting workshops and peer review of monitoring plans

A CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy is awarded to each participant who attends the full programme and completes the partner assessment and drafting exercises.