Is your nonprofit at risk? Do you know if fraudulent activity is taking place within your organization? None of us want to become a statistic, but with the rampant and varied means by which fraud occurs, it can be easier than you realize to be susceptible to fraud. In today’s society, fraud is like a mask that covers up the truth and takes on many different forms and identities which makes it harder to identify and eliminate. No matter what, fraud is a destruction of trust, and it is so important to be aware of what is truly going on within your organization in order to prevent it. Because nonprofits are considered trustworthy by nature of the public good they intend to do, the damage in violating trust is even more severe for not-for-profit organizations.
Reducing Fraud’s Risk:
We all know and understand that abusing trust can be costly for nonprofits. Ultimately, it could be more than just costly for fraudulent activities to take place at an organization. It can actually completely destroy and terminate organizations that are not careful and vigilant in protecting their organization and doing all of the necessary steps to prevent fraud. Fraud can be prevented by using internal controls and internal audits in order to be detecting it quickly. It can also be stopped by educating the organization’s staff on the forms of fraud and actions that would constitute it in addition to its impact and how to report it if it is being noticed. Finally, fraud can be prevented through the board of director’s vigilance, policies, and financial supervision. To learn more about these three ways to prevent fraud, visit here.
Beck and Company’s Certified Public Accountants and Business Advisors offer auditing services that can provide you with an extensive examination of financial statements to give you a closer look at possible areas of fraud within your organization through a nonprofit financial audit so that you can be intentional in establishing and maintaining trust in those areas instead of harming it. These nonprofit financial audits are truly essential to maintaining the organization’s health, but they are not the sole means through which fraudulent activity can be discovered. Ongoing effective financial reporting and the use of these reports to continuously be sharing this information with constituents and board members to ensure financial transparency is essential.
The Types of Fraud and How Financial Transparency can Help:
Let’s take a closer look at the forms and faces fraud can take and how to unmask these fraudulent activities and prevent them with financial transparency and effective financial reporting. Nonprofit organizational fraud can take the form of:
- Payroll or billing schemes
- Check tampering
- Unrecorded or understated funds
- Mischaracterized or fictitious expenses
- Undisclosed conflict of interest transactions
- And many other forms as well
Clearly, many of the types of fraud stem directly to finances and financial practices within a nonprofit organization. Both intentional errors in use of funds and intentional errors in recording funds lead to fraud and trouble for nonprofits. Falsifying funds and financial records is so costly and damaging to organizations that it is important to be consistent, vigilant, responsible, and in tune to financial actions and transactions on an ongoing basis in order to uphold financial transparency. Effective financial reporting is key, and active involvement in financial dealings is essential to knowing what is going on within the financial side of the organization to prevent dishonest activities from having a chance to even occur let alone expand.
Beck and Company CPAs are passionate about helping nonprofits get their financial reporting in order so they reduce the risk of fraud. Learn more about all of the nonprofit services we offer in addition to the auditing services mentioned earlier. Contact us to let us know how we can help your organization with the financial services, internal audits, and other services to keep your finances in check and your organization “unmasked” to prevent fraud.