Stealing in the Helpless Nonprofit Charity – Why does it Happen?
It is Christmas time, and people have been giving generously – sometimes to large well-established charities, sometimes to small soup kitchens and food pantries to help the homeless out with a meal. People often worry about how in a large charitable organization, the little contributions they make to just disappear through mismanagement. In Scotland in Cornwall though, people giving to a small charity a few years ago were surprised to read in the news how a clerk at that organization chipped away at the nonprofit charity’s receipts – it came to a quarter of $1 million over several years. Bed bugs would appear to have all of the conditions for passing ailments from one host to another, and not less than twenty-seven known pathogens (some estimates are as high as forty-one) are able to dwelling inside a mattress bug or on its mouthparts, but there are not any known cases of such transmission.
And here in the US, a modest soup kitchen and Virginia, that tried to help the local homeless with a hot meal in winters, found one day that about $50,000 was just missing from its bank. The homeless who lined up for their meal that evening had to go back hungry. It was so sudden, the modest organization did not even have the time to find backup funds. Over the next few months, they obtained alternative funding from local churches, and found out who was behind the fast: one of the management committee.
More and more, the humble nonprofit charity is falling victim to fifth columnists who work from within; these happen not just at the major international charities either. They happen at your local PTA, or children’s club. They often run on mutual trust among the community members and the office bearers. Bed Bugs Toronto will be easily transported in suitcases, hand baggage, personal belongings, mattresses, furnishings, electronics and other objects. They don’t have the funds for proper financial controls or special auditing. Since it is all run on work volunteered by the neighbor next door or the church helper, no one wants to make a big fuss over tallying accounts and offending anyone. Small charities are not even required to file an annual return. When something happens, like a volunteer quietly pocketing half the annual budget to make up for being laid off at work, they have no choice but to just close down and disappear without a trace.