Charity Fraud Awareness Week

Prevent Charity Fraud is holding their annual charity fraud awareness week on 25-29 November. This is the perfect opportunity for all Trustees to take a step back and review how well their charity is protected and there will be lots of free resources available to help. Trustees are responsible for safeguarding the charity’s assets to ensure it has the right awareness of the potential risks of fraud, and the measures which can be put in place.

Charities that don’t do enough to protect themselves from fraud may risk action being taken against it by the Charity Commission. At the end of September 2024, the Charity Commission released their 2023/24 whistleblowing stats which showed a 72% increase in the number of disclosures compared to the previous reporting period. The primary issues were governance, safeguarding or financial management concerns.

For Trustees and senior management teams the starting point to robust governance and financial management to reduce the risk of fraud is having a strong control environment, with a good honest culture promoted amongst the team. The Charity Commission has recently updated its CC8 guidance on internal control checklists (Internal financial controls for charities (CC8) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Trustees should take the time to review the internal controls and ensure systems and controls are robust.

As part of Fraud Awareness week, Prevent Fraud are holding seminars, one locally in London, free for all Trustees and Senior leaders from the sector. To sign up and review the free resources check out their website.

A hot topic across many industry sectors now including charities is cyber security. Phishing, Ransomware attacks, social engineering, Malware and data breaches are all cyber threats which are increasing and becoming more sophisticated.

Charities that don’t keep on top of the risks posed to cyber security or ensure trustees, employees and volunteers are educated to these risks could fall victim. There are free resources available on the prevent fraud website above, but also do check out the free training available from NCSC.

Do keep an eye on our website for further reading during fraud awareness week, as well as the findings from our Kreston charity survey report later in the year. Working together to raise awareness of fraud we can help to protect the vital work of our charity sector here in the South East.