EXPERTS in the field of accounting and auditing want non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to be audited to enhance transparency in their operations.
This emerged at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (Icaz) conference held under the theme Reimagining NGO Innovation, Optimisation, Sustainability and Governance: Fostering Accountability in Building a Strong NGO Professional Base.
The experts discussed strategies to facilitate NGO audits and enhance sector transparency.
Icaz chief executive officer William Mandisodza said they had engaged the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisation (Nango) on the need for an accounting framework for the NGO sector.
“There are many procedures professional accountants can do other than an audit which gives assurance and what I have posed to (Nango) is for us to sit down and look at exactly what the donors want and exactly what government wants with regards to community-based organisations and then through our members we look at whether we can create a framework which obviously is lightweight,” Mandisodza said.
He, however, acknowledged that auditing NGOs may not be a walk in the park because of the way some of them are modelled.
“So it's a matter of sitting with these members and coming up with procedures which satisfy the interested parties,” he said.
The executive director of Organisation for Public Health Interventions and Development, Theonevus Chiyanga, said there was nothing wrong with auditing NGOs
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“At the point of submitting a proposal, NGOs must budget for the audit because it's a requirement, sometimes from the donor, sometimes most definitely from government,” Chiyanga said.
“So whenever you are applying for grants, it's imperative that within the grant application, you budget for the audit costs. And if you do it properly, then there won't be any problem in charging the cost of the audit to the donor.”
Senate recently passed the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill which seeks to regulate the operations of NGOs in the country.
Meanwhile, Nango director Ernest Nyimai said they would soon launch a dashboard to track down the activities of NGOs operating in Zimbabwe to enhance transparency.
Nyimai said the dashboard would provide comprehensive information about the number of NGOs operating in Zimbabwe, their activities and their distribution across districts.
“We have come up with the Zimbabwe Social Impact Investment Exchange Platform, which is a dashboard, which is accessible to anyone,” he said.
“Then you are also able to track which organisations are active...the system has historical data, so if you are able to do trend analysis one will be able to see if the funding is actually declining or is actually increasing.
Mandisodza said having such a dashboard would help to improve transparency within the sector.
