Director of Compliance

Position Overview

The Director of Compliance provides organization-wide leadership for compliance systems, monitoring readiness, documentation standards, corrective action tracking, and regulatory accountability across Next Door’s Head Start, Early Head Start, and related early childhood programs.

This role ensures that compliance is not treated as a last-minute response, but as an ongoing operating system embedded into daily practice. The Director of Compliance works closely with program leadership, ERSEA, health, family engagement, education, HR, finance, facilities, and executive leadership to ensure Next Door is prepared, organized, and consistently meeting expectations tied to Head Start Program Performance Standards, licensing, grant requirements, internal policies, and other applicable regulations.

The ideal candidate is highly organized, detail-oriented, collaborative, and able to translate complex requirements into clear systems, timelines, tools, and accountability structures. This person should be comfortable working across departments, following up with leaders, identifying gaps, and helping teams’ correct issues before they become larger risks.

Responsibilities / Duties / Functions / Tasks

Compliance Leadership and Systems Management

• Develop and maintain an organization-wide compliance calendar covering Head Start, Early Head Start, licensing, grant, governance, monitoring, reporting, and internal review requirements.
• Build ongoing monitoring systems that help departments understand what is required, who owns it, when it is due, and how completion is documented.
• Support the COO and executive leadership in identifying organizational compliance risks and recommending practical solutions.
• Translate regulatory and grant requirements into usable tools, checklists, workflows, and staff-facing guidance.
• Monitor compliance trends and help departments address recurring issues through process improvement.

Head Start and Early Head Start Monitoring Readiness

• Lead planning and preparation for federal monitoring reviews, licensing visits, audits, and other external reviews.
• Maintain monitoring readiness systems, including evidence collection, documentation tracking, file review tools, and corrective action follow-up.
• Coordinate mock reviews, internal compliance checks, and readiness assessments across departments and sites.
• Work with department leaders to ensure required documentation is accurate, complete, timely, and accessible.
• Prepare summary reports for executive leadership regarding readiness, gaps, corrective actions, and areas requiring attention.

Corrective Action and Internal Accountability

• Create and manage a centralized corrective action tracking process.
• Assign owners, timelines, documentation expectations, and follow-up steps to identify compliance issues.
• Monitor progress and escalate unresolved or high-risk items to the COO and President as appropriate.
• Partner with department leaders to ensure corrective actions are realistic, completed, and sustained.
• Help teams move from one-time fixes to stronger ongoing systems.
• Collaborates with other departments to direct compliance issues to appropriate existing channels for investigation and resolution.
• Responds to alleged violations of rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and Standards of Conduct by evaluating or recommending the initiation of investigative procedures.
  • Develops and oversees a system for uniform handling of such violations.
• Acts as an independent review and evaluation body to ensure that compliance
  • Issues/concerns within the organization are being appropriately evaluated, investigated, and resolved.
• Monitors and coordinates compliance activities of the organization to remain abreast of the status of all compliance activities and to identify trends.
• Identifies potential areas of compliance vulnerability and risk; develops/implements corrective action plans for resolution of problematic issues and provides general guidance on how to avoid or deal with similar situations in the future.

Cross-Department Compliance Coordination

• Partner with program, ERSEA, education, family engagement, health, mental health, disabilities, HR, finance, facilities, and IT leaders to support compliance across all service areas.
• Serve as a central resource for questions related to compliance expectations, documentation standards, procedures, and monitoring preparation.
• Support alignment between written policies and actual practice.
• Help departments prepare for recurring compliance needs such as child files, attendance documentation, eligibility records, staff qualifications, training records, facilities/safety checks, health requirements, and governance documentation.
• Ensure compliance processes are coordinated rather than siloed across departments.

Governance and Documentation Support

• Support documentation and process compliance related to Board and Policy Council approvals, timelines, agendas, minutes, and required governance actions.
• Partner with executive leadership, and family engagement staff to ensure governance-related compliance items are tracked and completed.
• Maintain or support systems for organizing policies, procedures, approvals, reports, and required records.
• Assist in preparing compliance-related updates for leadership, committees, Board, and Policy Council as needed.

Non-Federal Share, Grant, and Fiscal Compliance Support

• Partner with finance, development, program, and volunteer/community engagement staff to strengthen compliance processes related to non-federal share documentation.
• Support documentation standards for in-kind, volunteer time, donated goods/services, and other allowable match categories.
• Help ensure that internal controls are clearly documented and consistently followed.
• Support grant spend-down tracking and compliance documentation in partnership with finance and program leadership.
• Assist with audit preparation and follow-up related to grant and regulatory compliance areas.

Policy, Procedure, and Training Support

• Review policies and procedures for consistency with current requirements and organizational practice.
• Identify where new or updated procedures, templates, forms, or workflows are needed.
• Partner with HR, program leadership, and department heads to support compliance-related staff training.
• Develop clear staff-facing guidance that makes compliance expectations understandable and actionable.
• Support onboarding and ongoing training for leaders whose roles include compliance responsibilities.
• Institutes and maintains an effective compliance communication program for the organization, including understanding of new and existing compliance issues and related policies and procedures.
• Develops an effective compliance training program, including appropriate introductory training for new employees as well as ongoing training for all employees and managers.
• Monitors the performance of the Compliance Department and relates activities on a continuing basis, taking appropriate steps to improve its effectiveness.

Data, Reporting, and Continuous Improvement

• Track compliance with metrics, recurring findings, documentation gaps, and corrective action trends.
• Use data to identify patterns and recommend improvements to systems, training, staffing, or accountability structures.
• Prepare regular compliance dashboards or summaries for the COO and executive leadership.
• Support a culture of continuous improvement, transparency, and shared ownership.

Accountability and Performance Requirement

All staff members are accountable for knowing and performing the responsibilities associated with their individual position in an efficient and effective manner, understanding that each of us plays an integral role in the success of our mission.  All staff will support the agency’s mission, vision, standards of conduct/code of ethics and strategic directions and support administrative decisions.  This must be demonstrated by maintaining a positive work environment, and by behaving and communicating in an appropriate manner with children, families, coworkers, supervisors and the public while achieving performance expectations

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in nonprofit management, public administration, education, early childhood education, social work, business administration, compliance, or related field; equivalent experience may be considered.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in compliance, program operations, quality assurance, grants management, early childhood education, Head Start/Early Head Start, DCF licensing, nonprofit administration, or related field.
• Strong understanding of regulatory compliance, documentation systems, monitoring preparation, and corrective action processes.
• Experience working in a complex, multi-department organization.
• Demonstrated ability to manage deadlines, organize large volumes of information, and coordinate across multiple stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills are important.
• Ability to interpret requirements and translate them into practical tools and workflows.
• High level of discretion, professionalism, and judgment.
• You must have access to a personal vehicle to use on a daily basis, maintain a valid driver’s license and automobile insurance with liability limits of $300,000 (bodily injury) and $25,000 (property damage for each occurrence).

 Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Head Start and/or Early Head Start programs.
• Familiarity with Head Start Program Performance Standards.
• Experience preparing for federal monitoring reviews, licensing visits, audits, or grant compliance reviews.
• Experience in a nonprofit, education, early childhood, or human services setting.
• Experience with Policy Council, Board governance, or federally funded program requirements.
• Familiarity with ERSEA, child/family files, non-federal share, licensing, staff qualification tracking, and program documentation.
• Experience developing compliance calendars, dashboards, corrective action trackers, or internal audit systems.
• Comfort using Microsoft 365, shared document systems, databases, and reporting tools.
• Knowledge and understanding of Childplus.

Safety and Health

Next Door is committed to providing a safe work environment and to fostering the well-being and health of its employees. An essential part of each employees’ job is the development of safe working practices and the observance of safety rules, including:

• Following safety warnings and directions at all times.
• Using personal safety devices when required.
• Reporting any unsafe conditions to the supervisor.
• Following process for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect.
• Reporting unsupervised children, after ensuring a child’s safety.

 Physical Demands

• Primarily active work; occasionally lifting up, holding or moving up to 50 lbs.

Work Environment

• Mainly office setting and travel to various sites for meetings.

Personal / Physiological

• Ability to make frequent, significant decisions to understand and react to the development process of children.
• Ability to respond quickly and competently to an emergency or crisis situation in order to keep staff and children safe.