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Keywords

Accountability, Transparency, Nonprofits, Self regulation, Regulatory

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations continue to positively impact society by playing a vital role in addressing social, economic, and humanitarian challenges worldwide. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa attract nonprofits by having less strict regulatory requirements. One of the unintended outcomes of operating in a less stringent regulatory framework is that transparency and accountability standards may be compromised. Inadvertently, having less stringent regulatory requirements may create governance gaps, information asymmetry, mission drift, donor mistrust, and sustainability challenges. Accountability and transparency are essential for fostering trust, continuous improvement, measuring impact, gaining stakeholder confidence, and achieving sustainable impact even with the scarcity of resources. Transparency can be viewed through the lens of procedural transparency, content transparency, accessibility transparency, participatory transparency, and justificatory transparency. Accountability can be viewed through the lens of upward accountability, downward accountability, reputational accountability, mission-based accountability, and strategy-driven accountability. To create more accountability and transparency, nonprofits should provide ease of Accessibility or publishing of audited financial statements and tax returns, have an online presence, create and implement strong internal control systems, increase voluntary and consistent self-regulation, leverage technology, and have multi-stakeholder collaboration and partnership between Donors and nonprofits. Nonprofit leadership and boards could be enrolled in professional development to fully understand the importance and impact of clear accountability and transparency measures.

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