A Dundee social club committee has faced calls to resign this week over what has been described by members as financial mismanagement for ‘a number of years’.
In a letter to the Fairmuir Social Club committee, member, Joe Hughes, said that the figures from the latest financial accounts had caused members ‘much anxiety’.
As well as amounts of money apparently mysteriously going missing, the committee have, according to Mr Hughes, created an atmosphere of intimidation and bullying. This includes the threat of expelling Hughes for blowing the whistle on the story.
This is a worrying time for the club, and there are now calls for the committee to step down.
There are question marks hanging over the financial stability of the club, as well as a PR challenge resulting from this story hitting the newspaper headlines.
The committee are now in a very difficult position. Even if the mismanagement claims are unfounded, they’ll carry a negative association that’ll be hard to shake.
Fidelity Guarantee Cover
We can’t specifically comment on the situation in Dundee, as we aren’t privy to the evidence to condemn or exonerate the committee.
But hypothetically, if a similar situation happened at your club, and it could be proven that committee members or employees were cyphering money, you’d need cover to ensure the dishonest behaviour didn’t leave your club in a sticky spot
Claims against Fidelity Guarantee Cover are hard because they’re usually a result of someone abusing your trust. And because of the thief’s position at the club, there’s a chance that they’ve been able to drip feed the funds away from the club over a long period of time.
There have been cases over the past year or so where employees have stolen £200,000.
Could you club survive that kind of loss?
As hard as it is, the key is to not let anyone have too much of the club’s trust. Everyone should be accountable to the same risk management systems.
To help you avoid situations like the one that’s possibly arising in Dundee, here are some of our top tips for preventing employee fidelity at your club.
- Be vigilant when you’re hiring. Make sure you do proper background checks, browse their social media profiles and speak to former employees. Many culprits in this form of crime have previous.
- Money should be banked regularly and receipts should be reconciled with bank statements. Ideally the reconciliation and banking should be done by two different people. Have a process of reconciliation before putting money in the safe and ideally have this checked off by a more senior member of staff.
- Set an upper limit for cheques payable from the business – anything over that limit should be signed/verified by two different people.
- Some policies even insist that all employees who have any responsibility for money or stock take two weeks uninterrupted holiday each year. It is very easy for an employee to cover their tracks if nobody else is ever involved in the banking, stocktaking or reconciling.
We’ll keep you updated on any developments in Dundee, but in the meantime, if you’re concerned that a situation could one day arise at your club, get in touch today. We can offer Fidelity Guarantee Cover as part of our comprehensive, tailored policies.
