Pre-employment background checks, a best practice
By John Flanagan
In the wake of a number of well-publicized cases involving theft, fraud or lack of background checking at Hawai‘i nonprofit organizations, HANO has done some checking into background checks for nonprofit employees. One case involved a Queen’s Medical Center executive now facing mail fraud charges for allegedly defrauding the hospital of more than $545,000 paid to consulting businesses that she owned and for which she was the sole employee. Another involved a “Waipahu grandmother” who stole $175,000 from the nonprofit Arizona Memorial Museum. Then, there was the revelation that the local Kidney Foundation hired a convicted felon to fill a senior management position.
At a national conference in Denver in October the general counsel of Make a Wish Foundation spoke about a former auditor for the Foundation who was hired as CFO of a local chapter and subsequently embezzled $100,000. The attorney said, according to investigators, an embezzler is usually the person seen as the hardest working, reliable and most loyal who is also familiar with the organization's internal controls. “I found this very interesting in light of the Advertiser story (about fraud at Queen’s),” said Hugh Jones, supervising deputy Hawai‘i Attorney General, who attended the Denver conference.
Pre-employment background checks might not put an end to expensive embarrassments like these any more than X-raying passenger shoes ends airplane hijacking, but both are barriers to future abuses. The “Principles and Practices for Nonprofit Excellence” of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, a widely respected and often adopted set of nonprofit management guidelines, includes this in the section on Human Resources:
“Nonprofits should conduct background checks on employees and volunteers, particularly if their positions involve working with children or vulnerable adults, performing financial duties or serving in other sensitive areas.”
The American Red Cross has gone so far as to set up a national background check program for new employees and volunteers. In Hawai‘i, employers can perform a criminal record check by registering online on the Hawaii State eCrim web site set up by the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center.
Users can search state criminal conviction records by name and narrow the search by Social Security Number date of birth and gender. Once a record has been located, it can be purchased for $13. A credit card is needed to create a user account and it will be charged $1 to verify the identity of the cardholder. The records searched are limited to only the files maintained by the state data center, however, and don’t include other states.
Many vendors offer national criminal record searches. A Google search will turn them up. Fees start at about $20 and increase with the number of categories employers want to check. There are plenty of categories to choose from: civil and criminal federal, county and state court records, business registrations, credit checks, real estate transactions, terrorist affiliations, Social Security Number and birth certificate verifications, address histories, professional licenses, tax liens, lawsuits, sex offenders, marriage and divorce records, bankruptcies, evictions, malpractice, foreclosures, voter registrations, national and local news media, aliases and maiden names.
Job candidates can pre-empt pre-employment background checks by having a background check done on themselves and including it with their resume when they apply for a job. The Choice Trust “Top Candidate” background check “allows you to differentiate yourself from other job seekers by giving employers confidence in the accuracy of your background information.”
The online reports cost $24.95 and include a search of the National Criminal File. For additional fees, county criminal file searches, sexual offender registrations, reference checks, identity, credential, education and employment verifications can be included.
The Nonprofit Risk Management Center provides free technical assistance by telephone or email to nonprofit staff and volunteers. Click here to find NRMC's fact sheet and discussion of pre-employment screening and handy employment screening checklist.
John Flanagan is president and CEO of the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations. You can reach him at (808) 529-054 or jflanagan@hano-hawaii.org.
