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Charity finance policy Fraud

Celebrating small charities

Small charities play a crucial role in both the charity sector and the wider public. With 97% of the sector made up of charities with an annual income of less than £1m, small charities deserve to be celebrated. This Small Charities Week 19 - 24 June, will be the seventh year that the Foundation of Social Improvement (FSI), will be supporting and promoting the vital work that small charities to day in day out. Conchita Garcia, Head of Projects and Fund Development at the FSI, has written a blog post for CFG outlining the exciting opportunities for during Small Charity Week. As you have probably seen, each day of the week is themed and we have been sharing useful resources and link accordingly:

  • Monday -  I ♥ Small Charities Day
  • Tuesday – Big Advice Day
  • Wednesday – Policy Day
  • Thursday – Fundraising Day
  • Friday – Small Charity Big Impact Day
  • Saturday – Celebration Day

CFG and our work with small charities

This month is bittersweet for CFG and our work with small charities. At the end of the month we’ll be wrapping up our Small Charities Programme training. We have delivered over 1,000 face-to-face training places to small charities across England and Wales in crucial areas of charitable finances. We are very sad to say goodbye to our Small Charities Programme training and our fabulous trainer Rachel Cooper. CFG will continue to support small charities beyond this the completion of the programme, whether that’s working with small charities directly, advocating on your behalf to government and the Charity Commission or continuing to provide resources. You can watch a short video below which looks at the work CFG has done over the past 12 months providing small charities with much needed finance training. 

We know, from consistently good feedback and talking to these organisations, that this programme has been exceptionally useful for all who attended. For those were unable to attend a training, free resources can be found on our website dedicated to Small Charity Finance. We’re also currently conducting a survey to find out if people feel more confident in their financial capability since the introduction of the programme. You can complete this survey (and potentially win a free place at a CFG event in 2017 of your choice) here.

CFG’s Small Charity Guide to Preventing Fraud

As Small Charities Week focuses attention on the excellent work of small charities, CFG has produced two resources for small charities to use to help them prevent fraud. With austerity still continuing, and inflation expected to rise, small charities need to carefully ensure that they do not lose any money to fraud. The Small Charities Guide to Preventing Fraud will help small charities to outline the steps you need to take to protect yourself against fraud, highlight what tell-tale signs to look out for, know what to do once you have detected fraud and where to report the fraud to.

To complement The Small Charities Guide to Preventing Fraud, CFG has also produced a Counter Fraud Checklist. This checklist is designed to help charities to establish (or strengthen) their counter-fraud policy. The checklist asks ten essential questions that all charities should be thinking about when working to tackle fraud. We hope you can use both of these resources to make countering fraud a crucial part of your charity's governance. With charities being under even more scrutiny from the public, government, donors and beneficiaries it is vital that we are seen to be proactive in ensuring that every single penny is spent helping to fulfill our charitable aims.

This post was last reviewed on 17 October 2018 at 15:51
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