Transparency for non-profits
This folder is for directors, treasurers, board secretaries and communications staff. Donors, funders, regulators and the people you serve increasingly expect to see how a non-profit is run: where the money goes, who decides, and what was decided. In some countries some of this is required by law, for example the public disclosure duties of US 501(c)(3) organizations or the filings of registered charities elsewhere; this help does not give legal advice, so ask your accountant or lawyer what applies to you.
Contents
What Exponential provides
| Need | What exists | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Publish documents | File objects (file class, ezbinaryfile), downloads through content/download with a permission check | Files and downloads |
| Keep earlier versions | Every publication is a version; 45 per object by default, configurable per class | Version history limit |
| Show who changed what | The tamper-evident audit trail, on by default | The audit trail |
| Publish on a date | Scheduled publication with a workflow | Scheduled publishing |
| Board-only papers | Sections and roles | Sections and object states |
| Feeds of new publications | RSS 2.0 and Atom exports | RSS feeds for your site |
| Machine-readable access | The REST API (ezprestapi, v1 and v2) | REST API v1 and v2 |
The pages of this folder
| Page | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Annual publications as downloads | Annual reviews and filings as files, by year, accessible, with corrections |
| Financial documents | Accounts, budgets, spending on grants; what to publish and what to keep private |
| Board and minutes pages | Board members, meetings, agendas and minutes; public and board-only |
| Versions and the audit trail | Showing what a page said and who changed it |
| Open data, RSS and REST | Feeds, exports and the API for funders, networks and researchers |
Outline: Annual publications page outline.
A transparency page set
A typical "Accountability" area of a non-profit site:
| Page | Content | Page in this folder |
|---|---|---|
| Who we are | Mission, legal name, registration details | |
| Our people | Board, leadership, how decisions are made | Board and minutes pages |
| Our money | Annual publications, financial statements, where donations go | Financial documents |
| Our policies | Privacy, complaints, safeguarding, conflict of interest | Annual publications as downloads |
| Our impact | Outcomes, stories, evaluations | Grant outcomes for funders |
| Contact | Who answers questions about these documents |
Public bodies' practice is a good model; see Transparency in Exponential at a glance and Proactive disclosure.
What stays your own process
- Deciding what must be published, and by when (law, regulator, funder).
- Redacting personal or confidential data before publishing: "redaction is a manual step" (Redaction is a manual step).
- Approving documents before they go live (Approval before publishing).
- Keeping the official records; the site is a publication channel, not your archive of record.
Related pages
- Non-profits: start here
- Governments: start here
- Transparency checklist (government)
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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