Trustees, fundraisers and your IT team all have a role to play in keeping your organisation safe. Whilst Trustees have overall legal responsibility, fundraisers should be undertaking due diligence on all donors and partners, and your IT team should be providing regular reports on suspicious activity, perhaps such as increasing donation amounts or uncharacteristic origins of payments.
In the week that the Charity Commission started an investigation into three charities linked to sanctioned Russian oligarchs, it made me think more generally about what we do to protect ourselves from undue influence.
I hope that you all use the great tools which the Charity Commission provides at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-due-diligence-checks-and-monitoring-end-use-of-funds and especially the ‘Know your Donor’ and ‘Know your Partner’ checklists and other tools. If not, I would encourage you to work through these, so you know you are safe.