| Galatians 6:10 |
| "... doing good for all believers... " |
| 10/25/10 - Church Security: gaining by stopping loss |
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These past several years of the declining economy have been tough on churches and ministries. Giving is down and needs of the community have grown; everyone has felt the financial strain.
These three incidents alone resulted in $377,000 in stolen church funds. This is unfortunately nothing new, in fact we wrote about internal thefts and embezzlement on our website before (see: 06/01/09 - Church Security: it starts from within). The article warrants review because the problem doesn't seem to be slowing down, and again, churches naively feel that whomever they have handling their church funds is trustworthy. Recently an Indiana church stated that they were "shocked" when their 68-year-old Treasurer was arrested for stealing $257,000 from their church. From a Christian standpoint I am not sure why anyone would be "shocked", especially Christians. The Bible tells us we are all sinners and no one is beyond temptation. We have seen Pastors, staff, and volunteers all steal from the church, from a few hundred dollars to well over $1 million. The average loss is almost $200,000 per incident this year. And there are so many repercussions from an Internal Theft incident; from loss of reputation of the church, loss of congregation members who trusted the church to have adequate controls of their donations, to sometimes the church having to close their doors because they just cannot recover from such a financial loss. You would think that this would be a priority for the church? One of the largest and well known accounting companies in the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (known as "pwc") is in the business of researching and putting financial control best practices into place. They have conducted some of the most extensive research into financial fraud and loss and have come up with conclusions for the business world that we have no reason to believe that they are not applicable to the Christian community. Here are some of the highlights of their "Global Economic Crime Survey" (GECS) for 2009 (http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/economic-crime-survey/key-findings/economic-downturn-fraud-risk.jhtml#):
As made clear from above and our previous information, the scary part about Internal Theft, Fraud, and Embezzlement is that much of it goes undetected, sometimes not discovered until years later, if ever at all. When we talk about crime and statistics, we are usually talking about things that "may" happen to your church in the future. When you walk up to your church in the morning, and the front door's glass is broken out, you know your church has become a victim. In cases of Internal Theft, they are crimes that are covert, that are "in progress", going on right now as you read this, by someone you know, trust, and care about as a brother or sister in Christ. Talk to your church's insurance agent and accountants about measures that may be put in place to take away the temptation of taking church funds and ways to detect if one is taking place. Most of these measures are procedural and don't require a lot of investment of money. But they do require that everyone follow business control practices, no matter what their position, no matter how long they have been with the church. No one should be exempt from following good business practices and no one should have anything to hide when they are handling church funds. The future of your church's existence may be on the line. In Christ, Jeff Hawkins Executive Director Comments about this article? Let us hear from you: click here Comments from last week's article:
"Good stuff. Keep it coming. Just wish I could get my admin staff at church to understand the depth of this issue." J.L.
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