Need for Improved Fiscal Controls Over Combined Federal Campaign

GAO was asked to review the fiscal controls over the Combined Federal Campaign to see if greater safeguards are needed to ensure that Federal employee gifts are properly accounted for, controlled, and distributed to participating charitable groups. The specific concern was whether the difference between gifts pledged and gifts actually received, commonly called shrinkage, is being properly allocated to participating groups.

Combined Federal Campaign administrative offices, called central receiving points, receive detailed information on gifts by Federal employees during the annual September through December solicitation period, including the charity or charities and amounts of any designated gifts. However, during the succeeding calendar year, when pledged gifts are actually withheld from employee paychecks, central receiving points did not receive from Federal payroll offices the detailed information on shrinkage needed to ensure the proper distribution of contributions to participating charities. Without knowing which pledges are fully contributed and which are not, central receiving points cannot be assured that they are properly allocating shrinkage to participating charitable groups. GAO found that central receiving points are forced to allocate shrinkage based on distribution methods which may have little relationship to shrinkage applicable to specific charities. As a result, some charitable groups may absorb too high a share of overall shrinkage while other charitable groups may absorb less than their proper share. GAO believes that the implementation of a composite check procedure is a viable solution to this problem.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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