Nonprofit Sector Already Reporting on Finances; Johns Hopkins' Listening Post Survey Details Nonprofit Financial Reporting Practices.

(From AScribe)

BALTIMORE -- In a recent survey distributed to more than 600 nonprofit organizations across the United States, 95 percent reported regularly distributing financial statements to their boards of directors and 97 percent said they have undergone an audit within the past two years.

"What this shows is that the nonprofit sector is already adhering to many of the financial disclosure practices that have been the subject of recent Senate Finance Committee hearings," said Lester Salamon, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, which oversees the Listening Post Project.

"This survey provides the first solid empirical picture of the financial disclosure practices of nonprofit organizations and demonstrates why it may be unwise to base legislation on a handful of anecdotes that fail to capture the true picture of nonprofit operations," said Peter Goldberg, CEO of the Alliance for Children and Families, and the chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Listening Post Project.

Salamon noted that the nonprofit organizations surveyed by the Listening Post Project were considerably less likely than for-profit firms to delay their required filings with the Internal Revenue Service. At the same time, these organizations were opposed to a Senate Finance Committee staff suggestion to require performance data as part of these filings.

"In our survey, managers of nonprofits were not against performance reporting as a concept, but felt that a tax return is not the appropriate vehicle for it, given the complexity of performance measures and the multitude of different activities in which nonprofits are engaged," said Salamon.

In addition, the survey found that: