Fraud and Abuse in Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Prevention and Detection
"The exposure that nonprofit organizations have to fraud and abuse is a very real risk and is growing every day. The key to preventing and detecting fraud and abuse is the implementation of a multifaceted organization-wide model of deterrence. This model, which is introduced in Chapter Two, relies upon involvement in fraud deterrence at every level of an organization and in virtually every function within an organization."–from Chapter OneBusiness headlines today reflect an ongoing litany of "misdirected" assets, restated earnings, and out-and-out fraud. These cases, representing some of the biggest names in corporate America, have become frequent enough that much of their power to shock the public has been lost. But let the headlines involve a nonprofit or charitable organization, and the outcry can critically harm the organization involved–not to mention the goals they work so hard to achieve.Fraud and Abuse in Nonprofit Organizations is the first book to provide a detailed examination of the myriad financial abuses that can occur in the nonprofit arena, along with specific guidelines for their detection and prevention. Nonprofit authority Gerard Zack combines his in-depth knowledge and experience with actual examples of nonprofit frauds, both how they were carried out and how they could have been prevented, as he answers questions including:What makes a nonprofit organization uniquely vulnerable to fraud?What are the most prevalent–and preventable–types of schemes?Which financial controls are most effective for combating each type of scheme?Which administrative systems and policies can best catch and control fraud?What are the roles and duties of management and the board of directors?Like mainstream, for-profit companies, nonprofits rely almost entirely on the goodwill and trust of the public. But with nothing but their good names to fall back on, nonprofit organizations can suffer irreparable harm from highly publicized cases of fraud. Fraud and Abuse in Nonprofit Organizations explains how to detect and prevent financial frauds and abuses, and helps executives implement controls to ensure that when money is entrusted to them–it stays with them.