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.

‘This important volume is a detailed and sophisticated exploration of an increasingly important topic in the nonprofit and philanthropic world: the role of accountability and self-regulation. The pressures for nonprofit and philanthropic accountability are growing, and voluntary regulation is a key means to fulfil that imperative. This book will be crucial for scholars, students, policymakers and others in understanding these accelerating demands on the nonprofit sector and the role that self-regulation can play.'

Mark Sidel - International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) and University of Iowa