Supporting Stakeholder Relationship Management via Disclosure on Resource Origins: Evidence from the World's Top NGOs

Abstract

Issues surrounding accountability form a central part of the ongoing discussion regarding the role, place, and value of civil society organizations. Decision-makers must be aware of this challenge, seeking out proactive and innovative ways to meet the calls for legitimacy, lest increasing competition for finite resources overcome them. The disclosure of financial information using the internet demonstrates a commitment to transparency and provides an opportunity for users to make better decisions, fitting into theories on relationship marketing. This study serves the dual purpose of joining theoretical bases concerning accountability, legitimacy and marketing in the NGO realm and the execution of survey research on the online financial disclosure of the organizations listed in The Global Journal's “100 Top NGOs 2013” Ranking, with particular attention to the origins of their resources. Content analysis was applied to categorize the line items contained in the NGOs´ Income Statement (or equivalent) reports, and quantitative techniques were employed to generate conclusions regarding the income mix, the share of the resource total represented by each category, and each NGO´s degree of dependence on each. The results indicate that donations are the most prevalent category among the sample (41.25%), followed by revenues (24.10%) and grants (17.93%). Donations were also shown to represent, on average, approximately 39% of the income mix of the NGOs in question. Finally, the vast majority of the sample (62 of the 69 reports-providing NGOs) was found to be dependent on one category alone, more than half of which received 80% or more of their resources from a single category in the year in question. These results contribute to developing research in the field of NGO web-based accountability as well as highlighting the need for a greater integration of transparency into stakeholder management practices.