The National Fraud Authority (NFA) is running a survey of 10,000 charities to try to improve understanding of the scale of fraud in the charity sector.

Back in January this year the NFA estimated that £32.2m was lost by the sector during 2008, but as these types of fraud are often under-reported it believes the true problem may be greater.

NFA research and analysis manager Catherine Hayes said: “We know you have lots of work but we’d urge you not to ignore this survey if you receive this – the more we understand this problem, the more we can do to help charities protect themselves better.”

The results of this survey will feed into the second Annual Fraud Indicator which will be published in early 2011.