Is the Non-Profit World Teeming With Fraud?

When we recently wrote a column suggesting that philanthropies be run more like businesses, one factor we didn’t look into — but perhaps should have — was fraud.

According to a Times report by Stephanie Strom, fraud and embezzlement in the non-profit sector account for a loss of $40 billion a year, or roughly 13 percent of philanthropic giving.

The article is based on a report (gated) recently published in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Strom’s article peaked at about No. 6 on While Strom’s article hasn’t hit the Times’s “most e-mailed list“; I am guessing that just about everyone in the non-profit world has read it by now, and are readying their replies to anxious donors.

Thirteen percent gone to fraud! That’s about the same loss experienced by the Bagel Man — and he didn’t even have anyone watching the till.