Category: Off Topic

I Ask For Your Money

Compliance Building is a free resource I publish for me, and share with you, to help the compliance profession. It will still be free, but I’m asking for money.

I should point out that the money is not for me; It’s for charity.

I’m riding the 2015 Pan-Mass Challenge to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
pmc-badge

Please support me.

If everyone who reads Compliance Building donated a few dollars I would exceed my fundraising goals. (Make a donation here.)

I’m really looking to the smaller group of loyal readers. A group that I think gets some value from what I publish. If you think it’s worth $1 a week. Then, please contribute $50… (Or More)

The ride is 192 miles over two days from Sturbridge to Provincetown. If I hit my fundraising goal, I’m going to add on another 100 miles and a third day of riding from the New York border over the Berkshires to Sturbridge.

Why am I riding and raising money?

1. Cancer Sucks. I’m sure that someone you know has been attacked by cancer. We are winning the war the cancer. Your donation will help win the war.

2. My Dad. He just fought a battle with cancer. And won, thanks to help from the Dan-Farber Cancer Institute. It’s a battle that my aunt and uncle, his brother and sister, did not win.

3.  Action Dave. My friend was diagnosed with metastatic oropharyngeal cancer in November of 2013. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute helped him beat back the disease. I’ll be riding by his side during the PMC.

4.  Jack Ramsden. In 2005 I rode the Pan-Mass Challenge with Team Kinetic Karma. The Team’s Pedal Partner was Jack. In March 2004, a then seven-month-old Jack was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive childhood cancer. This young boy valiantly endured treatments that have been known to kill grown men. With piercing blue eyes and a contagious smile, he defied the expectations of his doctors. But in the end, he could not overcome the disease. He passed away in December 2008.

5. 41 Million. That’s how big a check the Pan-Mass Challenge wrote to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in 2014. Every dollar you donate will help that check be bigger in 2015.

6. 100%. The Pan-Mass Challenge donates 100% of every rider-raised dollar to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund. (I pay an extra fee to pay for the ride expenses.) The PMC raises more money for charity than any other single event in the country.

Please Donate

Please donate to my PMC ride at one of the following links:

Thank you for your support.

Doug

Norman Leventhal

Norman Leventhal, the founder of my firm, passed away this weekend.

Norman LEVENTHAL map

Norman had a tremendous influence on Boston. His legacy will be with us for generations. He developed or re-develeped some of Greater Boston’s best-known landmarks: Rowes Wharf, Center Plaza, the Hotel Meridien, 75 State Street, and South Station. He formed the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, an extraordinary cartographic collection with over 200,000 historic and contemporary maps. The Norman B. Leventhal Park at Post Office Square is a 1.7-acre oasis in the Financial District’s granite, glass, and pavement desert that was formerly a hulking parking garage. He contributed years of service to MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,

Sources:

Looking for Signs

Compliance is all about looking for signs. You want signs that employees understand the rules. You want signs that mistakes are being spotted and fixed before they become bigger problems. You want signs that big problems are being smartly corrected.

Those signs take many forms. You can monitor hotline calls. You can have employees repeatedly deliver affirmations. You can run forensic testing.

Right now, with snow chest depth in my front yard, I’m looking for signs that spring will come. Punxsutawney Phil does little but highlight that we are stuck in the middle of winter.

Today, the first true sign that spring will come appears for New England. And Red Sox fans everywhere. It’s truck day.

truckday

Al Hartz from New England Household Moving and Storage will be driving the Red Sox equipment 18-wheeler when it departs Fenway Park on Thursday to begin the ride down to Fort Myers, Florida. Of course that assumes the truck can navigate the snow-clogged streets of Boston and make it out of town.

Compliance and the Super Bowl

super bowl

As a long time Patriots fan, it’s a great morning.

But the Patriots and the NFL were not without compliance failures. Clearly, something went wrong with the Patriots’ footballs in the Indianapolis game. I keep hearing conflicting reports and the investigation is not complete so it’s hard for me to draw any conclusions.

But the Patriots are tainted by the organization’s past rules violation. That makes the current claims all the more damning. Past failures will haunt an organization’s reputation for a long time.

For now, I’m enjoying the crazy win.

Image by Jim Moynihan

Happy Thanksgiving

first thanksgiving

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

 

The First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.