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Door County Humane Society Rebounds from Fraud

Door County Humane Society staff pictured here, seated from left, Ellen Pichler, assistant animal care coordinator, with Charlie; Jodi LeMere, cattery staff; Debbie Barnes, kennel staff, with Frankie. Standing, Carol Boudreau, interim director; Colleen McCarty, animal care technician; Jennifer Wotochek, animal care trainer/lead; Bailey Bjerke, cattery staff; Nancy Fisher, outreach coordinator; and Sarah Ewaskowitz, office manager.

When an organization is defrauded by a trusted employee, there is always much more than lost revenue. Discovery of the theft can also result in negative publicity for the organization and often leads to a decrease in productivity and morale among staff.

That is not the case with the Door County Humane Society (DCHS) after it was revealed earlier this month that former Executive Director Carrie Counihan was charged with felony theft of tens of thousands of dollars and 11 counts of identity theft, according to the criminal complaint. Counihan, 39, left the society in late January and is scheduled to make her initial court appearance on May 4.

“I think the most important thing that we need to get across to our members and the community of Door County, is that regardless of what has taken place here with our last director, no services have been discontinued or stopped or anything like that,” said DCHS Board President Marilyn Jensen.

She said Interim Director Carol Boudreau, staff and volunteers have rallied to make sure nothing like this can happen again and that the important services provided by the DCHS continue uninterrupted.

“We’ve been really very fortunate with having Carol on staff for offering direction and agreeing to serve as interim director,” Jensen said.

“The staff has just been phenomenal,” Boudreau said. “They just stepped up in amazing ways.”

In the past, the executive director served as the face of the shelter, to the detriment of other staff members whose talents were left untapped.

“We have a grant writer now,” Boudreau said. “We have individuals with medical training to pick up that area, people with management skills. It’s been so amazing to see this group of people, who less than a year ago were cleaning the litter box, taking care of the cats, moving onto the next one. This has opened all kinds of opportunities and they just step in. They are coming to me with a wealth of ideas.”

“It’s sort of like being reborn,” said Clay Bonin, a former DCHS board member who returned to the board to help get it back on financial track.

One of the steps taken was the creation of a finance committee to oversee finances. The committee is comprised of Bonin, DCHS Treasurer Sue Anderson (who also returned to the board after the fraud was revealed), another board member and a person from another nonprofit who happens to be an accountant.

“We will establish the fiscal protocols we will follow from now on,” Bonin said. He said those protocols will include a purchase order system, a joint bill-paying system by the DCHS director and treasurer, and an independent third-party to verify that bills match up.

“So we have multiple levels,” Bonin said. “What we’re trying to do, if anyone walks in from the outside, we can show them. We want absolute transparency on how we operate. We’re proud of how we operate. I think we can serve as a model for a lot of the smaller nonprofits in Door County who operate on trust alone and assumptions that this is going to be done right and not enough checking. I think we’re a good model for that.”

Boudreau pointed out that there was too much trust among all concerned that things were being done correctly, right down to annual audits by a reputable organization and supposed oversight by a local CPA. But according to a 2012 report from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, only 3.3 percent of workplace fraud is detected during an independent audit.

“There was some documentation which everyone believed was sufficient to give you a good idea of what was going on. What we did find out, first off, profit and loss statements in and of themselves are not sufficient to give you the full picture,” Boudreau said. “Now when you go into a board meeting, there are three different documents that have to be looked at. Certainly the P&L statements are still there, but where are we really financially? What is the status of our finances?”

All of these checks and balances will bring the DCHS into the black next year, Bonin promises.

“We will be successful next year,” he said. “We’ve had some financial obligations to take care of that were totally unexpected this year. But doing the budget, it was easy to identify real costs and make very accurate projections. Next year I think that we’ll be absolutely in the black and have a successful year.”

“When something like this happens and you really look at how you were doing things and you can correct mistakes, I don’t think there is a safer place for donor dollars at this stage,” Jensen said. “I know we’re going to work very hard to regain the community’s trust and our donors’ trust. If we can serve as a role model for other nonprofits and if everyone can learn from this, I think it would be a valuable lesson not only for us, but for everybody.”

 

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