How can nonprofit organizations and NGOs demonstrate accountability to stakeholders and show that they are using funds appropriately and delivering on their promises? Many nonprofit stakeholders, including funders and regulators, have few opportunities to observe nonprofit internal management and policies. Such information deficits make it difficult for 'principals' to differentiate credible nonprofits from less credible ones. This volume examines a key instrument employed by nonprofits to respond to these challenges: voluntary accountability clubs. These clubs are voluntary, rule-based governance systems created and sponsored by nongovernmental actors. By participating in accountability clubs, nonprofits agree to abide by certain rules regarding internal governance in order to send a signal of quality to key principals. Nonprofit voluntary programs are relatively new but are spreading rapidly across the globe. This book investigates how the emergence, design, and success of such initiatives vary across a range of sectors and institutional contexts in the United States, the Netherlands, Africa, and Central Europe.

An analysis of the features of both governmental regulation of non-profit organizations and self-regulation by non-profit sectors themselves.

This book carefully develops the perspective of nonprofit organizations as social capital assets and agents of public policy within a principal-agent framework. It shows the practical as well as managerial and marketing advantages of such an approach, one that can lead to serious questions about many of the existing views that all nonprofits result from market or government failure. Bryce provides a more positive, cross-national and inclusive perspective on these organizations that applies across all of their disciplines and in developed or developing countries alike.

This book examines accountability issues and the problems of regulating non-governmental organisations (NGOs) through self-regulation. It focuses on methods of self-regulation for NGOs in response to prominent scandals that revealed problems with their accountability, notably the ‘Mafia Capitale’ scandal in Italy and the Oxfam GB scandal in Haiti. It also touches upon other accountability failures, including the allegations against the WWF of facilitating human rights abuses of indigenous groups in Cameroon. The work brings a legal approach to the topic of NGO self-regulation and accountability, contributing to the academic and policy debate in several ways. It advances a brand-new theoretical model to explain the reasons behind NGOs non-compliance with self-regulation, examines the reasons for self-regulation failures, identifies new accountability routes, and recommends proposals for sectoral reform. The book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers and PhD students who work in the area of NGO regulation and accountability from a legal perspective as well as to accountability and NGO scholars working in other disciplines. It will also appeal to practitioners and policymakers who work on the development of NGO policies.

This book covers the formation, tax, governance, and documentation issues [of nonprofit organizations] ... and addresses some other areas, including mergers and sale of assets of nonprofits as well as dissolution of nonprofits. -- From the author's preface.

The economic importance of the non-profit sector is growing rapidly in the USA and Europe. However, the law has not kept abreast with its development. The European Court of Justice has extended certain freedoms of the EC Treaty to non-profit organisations, and more case law is expected to follow in the near future, but the observations, theories, solutions and legal and non-legal rules in this field are manifold. The chances of harmonising the law on a European level are slim. Despite these differences, a common core of international corporate governance problems and regulatory solutions can be seen. This volume of essays brings together a variety of international experts from both corporate governance and governance of non-profit organisations to compare the two areas and explore the lessons that can be learned regarding comparative corporate governance for non-profit organisations.