Fraud Risk Assessment for Social Purpose and Non Profit organisations

The Charity Commission has highlighted that fraud is a serious problem that Boards can’t afford to ignore, with a cost to the social purpose organisation sector of potentially billions of pounds each year.

Why is tackling fraud important to Boards?

Fraud poses a serious risk to valuable funds, as well as sensitive data, and can damage the good reputation of social purpose organisations, affecting public trust and confidence in the sector as a whole.

Boards are the custodians of their social purpose organisations and have a duty to manage their organisation’s resources responsibly. They have legal duties and responsibilities under charity and other law to safeguard their organisation and to ensure that its funds and assets are protected, properly used and applied, and accounted for. The public needs to be sure that money donated to social purpose organisations is used properly and goes to the causes for which it is intended.

Fraud Risk Assessment

We have created a document with relevant checklists and questions to ensure you assess fraud appropriately. This document contains references that have been made to the Charity Commission guidance. Although this is issued specifically for charities, it also identifies good practice which can be applied for all social purpose organisations.

This document includes:

key questions for Boards to ask as a starting point in considering fraud risk
detailed organisational counter fraud checklist which lists key questions for Boards on areas of organisational resilience
checklist of potential fraud risks by function and activity
set of questions from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) publication “10 Steps to Cyber Security” to assist Boards with their existing strategic-level risk discussions.