Anna Mueller was a volunteer bookkeeper for the Booster Club at Benson High School in Portland, Oregon. As reported by the Portland Tribune newspaper, she has now pled guilty to embezzling more than $10,000 from the club, which supports athletics at this technical high school. How was she able to take that much money? She had total control over both the records and the money, and she had access to the bank account.

The Booster Club’s predicament is a common one. It’s an all-volunteer organization and last year was its first year. At the time he started the Club, the coach was more than willing to accept help from an experienced parent who had skills he knew were important and didn’t possess. Through the school district, he ran a background check on Mueller, but it failed to uncover her prior conviction in another state for a similar crime because the district’s procedure only checks for crimes involving children.

He left the door of opportunity wide open by not setting up relationships and procedures so that Mueller would be dependent on others to complete her work, others who could participate in the processes so that duties were at least somewhat segregated, others who could review the records she kept.

Benson High’s athletic director, Bruce Alton, now says he thinks that the amount embezzled was closer to $17,000, but because “most of it was undocumented cash, it couldn’t be accounted for”. Booster clubs sell things:  refreshments, sweatshirts, other “school spirit” items. It seems that Mueller must have been the enthusiastic volunteer, waving away help from others, saying she was happy to take care of everything so others could have a good time. And nobody documented a cash count or looked to make sure the amounts they had documented actually made it into the bank.

The Tribune quotes Alton as saying he will make sure he follows any protocols for any volunteers, district employees, everybody. “I tried to use her sincerity to my advantage as well. I own that.” Other groups, he says, should take his experience to heart when accepting the services of eager volunteers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 7:41 am and is filed under Fraud in nonprofits, nonprofit accounting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.