Written for the organisations least able to afford a loss — and least served by corporate-scale advice.
By Abi Areh — CPFA Chartered Accountant, Auditor & Accredited Counter Fraud Specialist
Available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover.
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Every week, somewhere in the world, a small nonprofit discovers that someone it trusted has been taking from it. Not a sophisticated criminal — someone known and liked. A long-serving bookkeeper. A treasurer who never missed a meeting. A volunteer who seemed indispensable.
The damage goes far beyond the money. It costs organisations the confidence of their donors and funders, the certainty of their leaders, and sometimes the very programmes that people depended on.
Here’s the truth most small organisations never hear until it’s too late: good intentions and mutual trust are not a financial control system. They never have been.
Accountable by Design exists to change that — with a practical, proven system any small organisation can put in place, starting this week.
At the heart of the book is a framework built from years of frontline experience auditing, investigating fraud, and advising boards in the nonprofit sector. Five essential controls that work individually — and powerfully together:
These controls are not expensive. They don’t require sophisticated technology or a finance team. They were designed from the outset for the real conditions small nonprofits face: limited staff, volunteer trustees, stretched budgets, and cultures built on personal relationships. Any organisation can implement them, at any scale.
Whether you’re a founder, chief executive, trustee, board chair, treasurer, or finance volunteer — this book was written for you. It assumes no accounting knowledge and requires no specialist expertise. Just the willingness to take financial integrity seriously.
It’s written for small charities and nonprofits of every kind: community organisations, foundations, faith-based organisations and churches, community interest organisations, and not-for-profit bodies worldwide. UK context is covered in depth, with a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction appendix for readers elsewhere.
Most guidance on financial controls is written for organisations with a finance department. Then it’s “adapted” for charities by cutting bits out, and what’s left still assumes people, time and systems a small nonprofit simply doesn’t have.
Accountable by Design starts from the other end. It asks what a two-person team, a volunteer treasurer, or a board of trustees who all have day jobs can actually sustain — and builds the strongest protection possible from there. The five TRUST controls, the minimal risk register, the 90-day roadmap: every element is deliberately proportionate. Not controls-lite. Controls that fit — because a control that’s too heavy to run protects nobody.
That’s also why the system grows with you. Every template in the book is the foundation layer of the fuller apparatus larger organisations use — as your organisation matures, you extend what you built; you never start again.
This isn’t a book you just read. Every policy, form, checklist, and tracker in Accountable by Design is available to readers as a free, fully editable download in Microsoft Word and Excel. Add your logo, adapt the wording, and put it to work the same day.
Already have the book? Claim your toolkit here
Abi Areh is a chartered accountant, auditor, and accredited counter fraud specialist with extensive public sector and nonprofit experience. She is the founder of tablestewards.com. Abi has investigated fraud, advised boards through financial crises, and served as a charity trustee — so she knows board-level responsibility from the inside: limited time, complex information, and uncertainty about which questions to ask.
Her work is grounded in one conviction: most organisations don’t fail because of bad intentions. They fail because no one ever showed them what strong financial stewardship looks like in practice. This book shows them.
No. The principles are universal, and Appendix 1 provides regulatory context by jurisdiction. UK readers get detailed coverage of Charity Commission expectations, Gift Aid, and restricted funds.
Completely. Churches are among the small nonprofits this book is written for — the TRUST Framework applies directly to offerings, restricted funds, and volunteer-led finance teams. It’s the same practical approach Table Stewards has always taught, now for the whole sector.
No. The book assumes no accounting knowledge and is written for leaders, trustees, and volunteers.
That’s the idea — every chapter ends with board discussion questions, and the free toolkit includes a Board Discussion Guide.
It’s written for them — the examples, templates and workload all assume a small team. The principles are universal, and larger organisations regularly use it for trustee induction and board development. But if you’re looking for enterprise-scale risk and assurance frameworks, start with the assessment tools and articles instead; the book will feel deliberately simple, because it is.
The principles in this book are the same ones I applied auditing multi-million-pound organisations — only the scale of the machinery changes. Larger charities use Accountable by Design as a plain-English induction for new trustees and as pre-meeting reading that gives the whole board a shared language for controls. (The paperback works well bought as a board set.)
Your mission deserves the protection that proper stewardship provides. Start building it this week.
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