akoyaGO

Most foundations don't think of grant payments as a risk management issue. They should.

We hosted 60+ foundation professionals yesterday for a conversation on exactly this, and the numbers that came up are worth saving:

- Mail fraud targeting nonprofits is up 400% since 2021.

- The AARP and the U.S. Postal Service now officially advise against mailing checks.

- AI-generated forged IDs and doctored bank letters are increasingly common and increasingly hard to catch manually.

- And fundholder expectations are shifting fast: Fidelity Charitable is eliminating check payments entirely starting July 2026.

Here is why grant payments are so hard to modernize: charitable payments are structurally different from commercial ones.

🧾 There is no invoice exchange.
🤝 No prior relationship with the grantee.
💻 No way for a nonprofit to know a payment is coming.

That gap is what makes fraud easy to attempt and hard to catch.

The gold standard, according to Chariot: identity verification at enrollment, authority verification against the 990, bank-level KYC/KYB diligence, and real-time payment tracking. Not manual ACH management and a spreadsheet.

Colin Davis at the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi shared that since April, 99% of their grant volume has moved electronically.

✔️ If you work in grants, fund accounting, or foundation operations, save this post. The fraud landscape is changing fast and this is the kind of briefing worth keeping.

Recording and slides are linked below:
https://akoyago.com/grant-payments-at-a-crossroads-webinar/