2006 NONPROFIT HALL OF SHAME

Are nonprofits just sitting ducks? Is it easier to steal from a nonprofit? or is it a limit of imagination...our hearts are in the right place so much so that we can't conceive of someone setting out to take advantage...

Still every month (even every week at times), another story of a nonprofit fraud. NOTE: these are not charities who have defrauded the public, but rather charities who have been the victims of fraud.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2006

METHUEN, Mass. A Methuen woman faces two dozen felony charges for allegedly stealing from the Children's Glaucoma Foundation. ...45-year-old Karen Sicher stole more than half a million dollars from the Boston-based nonprofit organization....

SEPTEMBER 24, 2006

Elaine Bernard and Carol Dela Torre (launched) Genesis in 1987, eventually turning the Fresno group home and foster-care business into an $8 million annual enterprise caring for neglected, abused and abandoned children...Now the sisters...are accused of using the nonprofit's credit cards and business checks to skim more than $500,000 from the nonprofit business between 1996 and 2002, squandering public money intended for children on vacations and shopping sprees.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

TEWKSBURY — A former chief financial officer and another ex-employee of Oldwick's Work-Family Connection have been charged with embezzling more than $50,000 from the nonprofit agency, authorities said.

To further explore (deconstruct?) a recent non-profit fraud and see what steps you can take to prevent it at your organization refer to Risky Business.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Pam - Great post - My reply, however, got to be a bit too long and so I've posted it on my blog:
http://nonprofitconsultant.blogspot.com/2006/10/fraud-burnout-and-getting-what-we.html
10/01/2006 9:49 AM
"a fundraiser" said…
Great post as well. Despite the fact that my blgo focuses almost exclusively on these types of stories that fundraisers don't want to tell the donor. I honestly do not believe that nonprofit organizations are more at risk than for profit companies when it comes to fraud... and I certainly don't buy the burn-out excuse.
11/25/2006 1:15 PM
Anonymous said…
I keep hearing strange stories about Sibley Memorial Hospital -- Lucy Webb Hayes Foundation -- according to the Guidestar 990, the hospital had over 400 million cash. That makes the hospital the richest in DC and one of the richest in the US.

Robert Sloan, Sibley President tells its staff -- We're in dire financial straits. Plan on budget cuts.

Board members have hinted that Sibley has lost half of its endowment -- we're down to 260 million.

Where did our hospital money go?
5/28/2009 7:42 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE LIES PEOPLE TELL US (AND THE ONES WE TELL OURSELVES)

"I don’t understand these fundraisers, …they waste all this money…why don't they just give the money to …the sick people?" "…you know what? They don’t! They throw a party so rich people like me can spend $10,000 on a table and then they give it to the sick people!" ...that’s how it’s done ! Joan Cusack to Jennifer Aniston in "Friends with Money" Alright, let's get this over with folks: Fundraisers are a Lie! Yes that's right you heard me. A few months back, I attended a luncheon to raise funds for a school for the deaf. Yes, it was luncheon and a fashion show and a fundraiser all in one. First there was the obligatory silent auction, then (during lunch) the not-so-silent auction, and then after lunch when the plates were taken away, we were asked if we would like to purchase the Orchid Centerpieces! Hadn't they got enough from us? Let me think-No! Easy as it is to lampoon a fundraiser, that is not where I am going today. One of the ladies w
Read more

BIRTH OF A BLOG: GUERILLA MARKETING, EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY & GOOD CONTENT WIN THE DAY

Birth of a Blog: Guerilla Marketing, Effective Use of Technology and Good Content Win the Day by pam ashlund A funny thing happened when I started using Technorati. All I wanted was a quick way to see who ( if ANYONE ) was linking to my blog. First, I had to sign up with one of these services and I picked Technorati because it was the first one I came across. Second, I then found out that I was right from the beginning, no one was linking to my site. Third, I decided to try my hand at a bit of self-marketing, which went as follows: Get my brother-in-law to link to my site Set up another dummy blog and link to myself Arm wrestle another friend to link to my site None of that had much of an impact (of course) so I moved on to some actual strategy: Add tags to my blog configuration on Technorati Add tags to my posts (this was painful and manual although I later found a script for it) Test the results - found I showed up in search engines a LITTLE bit more frequently Still no links (tap,
Read more

GRAFITTI OR SOCIAL CHANGE?

Image
art institutions are a severely limited arena of reception for ideas about public issues --Robbie Conal If I can't take my coffee break, Gone is the sense of enterprise ...something within me dies. -- How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying I was born with a "Question Authority" bumper sticker metaphorically stuck on the back of my car. I grew up with that expression (and what it represents) as my moral imperative. But I've been worried lately. I've been worried because it doesn't seem to be turning out the way I thought it would. Seems a QA attitude is not necessarily conducive to civil society. It all depends on who's the authority I suppose. I seem to have the easiest time applying it to government and politics. But at what point do the concepts of "questioning" and the notion of "participating" intersect? Becoming a manager was a pivotal point in my life. A place where I had to make the transition from "hating t
Read more