NGO Management

The Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IoDSA) invites all interested parties and stakeholders to submit written comments to the draft practice note that provides guidance on how King III should be applied in the non-profit sector.

Corruption and inefficiency in government contracting will probably always be with us. But by introducing greater transparency in the the contracting process, we can dramatically reduce this burden. This idea is at the heart of Open Contracting, a movement to advocate for publishing of government contracts.

Need a free and effective accounting system?

I recently hosted a successful NGO governance seminar and had quite a bit of questions relating to the right accounting package and where to begin with regards to good record keeping. I have audited a couple of NGOs and the main reason NGOs outsource their accounting is because it is often too costly to hire a full-time accountant or just fear of having to do bookkeeping in-house.

Here are some of the questions I have been asked and my best response to it:

I need to start recording the NGO’s income and expenses. Where do I begin?

In the past few weeks, there has been yet another huge public outcry on the functioning of the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (NLDTF) and this has provoked a range of talk (and a lot of hot air too) about how we can go about fixing things to make one of the larger national development funders in South Africa, work better.

Many thanks to the 450 NGOs who marched to the National Lotteries Board (NLB) offices in Pretoria and the hundreds who signed our petition and supported us. NGOs from throughout South Africa i.e. Eastern, Western and Northern Cape, Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and Gauteng. People travelled from as far as Secunda, Nelspruit, Vereeniging to voice their outrage – one only has to look at the posters to gage their opinions.