DOCUMENT · IN DEVELOPMENT
Review Practices
Seven published sets of review points, 83 in all. Each tests a governed body’s own documents against its own governing instrument — using records a member or the public can already obtain.
Step 1 of the accountability loop is document. These are the instruments that do the documenting. They are deliberately dull: a review point is a question with a document behind it and an answer that would close it.
Why they are published
A review that cannot be repeated by someone else is an assertion, not a finding. Publishing the points in advance means an entity can see what it will be asked before it is asked, a member can run the same review without us, and a disagreement about a conclusion becomes a disagreement about a document. That is the only kind of disagreement worth having.
Each practice is versioned with the rest of our Methodology. When a point changes, every prior review that relied on it is re-applied and the version number moves.
What these reviews are not
- It is not an audit, examination, or investigation within the meaning of any professional standard, and it produces no assurance.
- It is not legal, accounting, or tax advice. See our Terms.
- A review point that resolves against an entity is a question, not a conclusion. Every published finding is designed to state the document it came from and the answer that would close it.
- Where a TASFGA researcher, founder, or board member is a member, party, or complainant in a matter concerning an entity, TASFGA does not publish a review of that entity. See Methodology.
The seven practices
Audit & Financial Records Review
Audited statements, budgets, and the records behind them, tested against the governing instrument.
14 review points → REVIEW PRACTICE 2Election Conduct Review
Ballot access, notice, proxy custody, and who counts the votes.
12 review points → REVIEW PRACTICE 3Records Retention & Access Review
A right to inspect is worth nothing if nothing was required to be kept.
10 review points → REVIEW PRACTICE 4Procurement Integrity Review
Who picked the vendor, who else was asked, and who got paid on the side.
11 review points → REVIEW PRACTICE 5Member Speech & Retaliation Review
What happens to the member who asks, and who pays for the answer.
11 review points → REVIEW PRACTICE 6Data Governance & Payment Security Review
Who can move the money, who holds the credentials, and who is told when it goes wrong.
12 review points → REVIEW PRACTICE 7Vendor & Professional Credential Review
The qualifications of whoever wrote the report the board is relying on.
13 review points →Where they came from
The practices were developed against residential community associations, TASFGA’s founding area of focus and the sector where the distance between what an entity discloses and what its governing documents promise is widest and least policed. The in-field evidence base is published at condoscoopsnyc.org.
They generalise because the failure does. A body that need not retain the record, need not compete the contract, and need not answer the member who asks is the same body whether it governs a building, a district, a hospital, or a profession. Each area of focus carries its own adaptation, published separately.
Independence
A review of an entity is worth nothing if the reviewer has an interest in the outcome. TASFGA’s proposed Independence Policy provides that it will accept no funding from entities whose conduct it reviews in an active area of focus. Any researcher with a material interest in a reviewed entity would be recused, and the recusal logged. See Transparency.
TASFGA is pre-incorporation. These practices are published drafts, not offered services, and no engagement is available. Members of a governed body who wish to apply them to their own entity are free to do so.