Church Financial Insecurity

Recently I posted about churches that are moving away from using volunteer ushers for security reasons: Church Security. No More Ushers Collecting Offerings. There is also a growing problem of embezzlement. From this Buffalo new article: Erie County churches seek to stem embezzlement : The Buffalo News: "In 2006, Zech and another professor at Villanova, Robert West, surveyed 78 chief financial officers in U. S. Catholic dioceses — 85 percent of whom said their dioceses had experienced some form of embezzlement within the previous five years." My brother is a certified fraud examiner and works with non-profits. He says every NP, including churches, needs to have a system of checks and balances where multiple people not related to each other count an offering, one person is the financial secretary who deposits the funds, one person is the treasurer who writes the checks, and a third person who opens the bank statements. Find out if your church is doing this. If not suggest they do. If they are resistant to adding another level of security, that should be a major concern.