The Thievery of Everything; is stealing really more common in the charity sector?
I clicked onto Third Sector’s website last week to read the charity news. It’s a sad sign of the times that two of the first three stories were damaging for the sector. Even sadder was that they were both about fraud. It’s not unusual. I began to think, is the charity sector just more vulnerable to theft? Possibly, possibly not. I really don’t think it matters whether it is or not. And here’s why.
The story that caught my eye first was Anne Yaman, 63, who just picked up a four year stretch at Her Majesty’s pleasure for stealing over £100,000 from her former employers, the Bentham Development Trust. On the back of this, I did a quick Google search for “charity staff fraud” and pulled up this list of names. Before you start reading, have a guess how far back this list goes:
Lorraine Warden, 43 – After admitting to embezzling £55,000 from Ninewells charity fund, she can expect a custodial sentence next month
Steven Neul, 45 – The former senior officer at Shoreline Housing Partnership was arrested after fraudulently ordering over 300 iPhones and iPads to sell for his own gain, valued at over £170,000. He’s awaiting sentencing with "all options open" to the judge
Craig Whittingham, 23 – Convicted of taking £133,000 from Mind Taunton and West Somerset, almost a quarter of their annual turnover, the Judge has just given him two years in the big house
Lynn Donovan, 43 – After pleading guilty to stealing £11,000 from the Wirral Toy Library by writing 21 fake cheques, she received a sentence of eight months
The list goes back just one month, even though the crimes were spread out across a few years. All of these stories were from the first two pages of my search.
The sector is appearing pretty vulnerable now. Certainly, it’s almost impossible to ‘pre-identify’ a thief. Notice a pattern from the above? I don’t. Three to two in favour of women, most were middle-aged but one older and one younger and they’re from up and down the country.
You could also argue charities are sitting ducks for stealing. There is a lure for a would-be thief of easy access to money in an environment where it doesn’t actually belong to anyone there. Surely it would be easier to defraud a charity than a small business where all the money belongs to an over-zealous owner?
In addition, is there less chance of your actions being challenged in a charity? Or do charities suffer more from opportunist thieves, suddenly surrounded by fluctuating levels of income that is difficult to track, impossible to predict and easy to hide (collection buckets is just one example that springs to mind)?
You can just as easily say the sector is not more vulnerable. Trustees can be an investigative and diligent bunch, as are senior managers, while past history (or a Google search) should be a huge red flag to charities in the fight to take care of their cash. It’s also worth pointing out that is quite possibly happens in every industry all the time, but we hear less about that because theft from charities is more newsworthy. ‘Man steals £50,000 from Sports Direct’ is probably less likely to boost an editor’s newspaper sales than ‘Charity worker steals £25,000 from sick children’s pockets’.
We’ll perhaps never know. For me though, it doesn’t matter. How vulnerable the sector appears is actually far more important than how vulnerable it is and right now, it’s looking pretty leaky. I’ll explain. Vulnerability can be fixed quickly, but a reputation cannot. Who wants to give to charity if it looks like someone will steal it anyway? When a large theft is reported, how many donors are thinking ‘that’s my money that I gave to fight cancer, not fund a holiday to the Tropic of Cancer’?
Trust in the charity sector is already at its second lowest in six years, with barely half of the public trusting it ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’. Our data also shows that people’s main reason for not giving to charity is ‘not enough money going to the cause’. Regular thefts of six figure amounts are hardly likely to help with either of these. Furthermore, they will continue to undermine any attempts to improve the situation.
Every time someone is convicted of stealing from a charity, the sector takes a knock. Often it’s unavoidable – people do steal. But what troubled me further about these stories is that they included no strong statements from charities. Where was the “we quickly identified that the person was stealing and immediately reported them to police.”? Which safeguards do charities have in place to stop it happening? And afterwards, what are charities doing to stop it happening again?
The reality is people will steal and many of them are probably caught. But when it comes to donors, their perception is their reality.
So what are we going to do about it? Or more importantly, what are we going to show people we’re doing about it?
Rob White
Have I stolen a march here? Or have I gone against the convictions you hold? Leave us a comment below.