Accountability

The Management Committee must be able to account for everything the organisation does. Even though your group or organisation may have paid staff and/or volunteers, the Management Committee is ultimately responsible and may be held liable for the consequences of actions taken or not taken.

However the Management Committee is not only required to be accountable, but to be able to demonstrate and communicate this to stakeholders by ensuring that appropriate systems and procedures are in place. By doing so, they reduce their risks of personal liability should things go wrong.

The board will be open, responsive and accountable, acting at all times with integrity, in the interest of the organisation and its beneficiaries. The board will:

This is also important in demonstrating the organisation is meeting the Public Benefit Requirement.

Who are you accountable to?

The actions and decisions of the Management Committee affect a range of people, including the organisation's membership, staff and many people outside the organisation.  These people are called stakeholders.

Stakeholders include, for example:

An organisation will demonstrate its accountability by being able to produce an accurate and verifiable record of how it has spent a particular grant.  Such a record would show how much was received, how much was spent and that all expended monies were spent on the grant aided activity as agreed by the funder.