Information on social impact at NGOs. The case of the Spanish charitable foundations

Abstract

Within the Spanish legislation, the requirements for inf ormation disclosure depend on the kind of organization. Most of Spanish Non - Governmental Organizations (NGOs) work as charitable foundations (a legal categorization of non - profit organizations), organizations where we focus on. In this paper we analyse the requirements that Spanish law establishes for the disclosure of social impact information for charitable foundations. Social impact is, probably, the best benchmark to measure the performance of this kind of non - profit organizations. There must be underli ned that Spain is divided into several regions (known as “Autonomias”), and some of these regions have specific rules for charitable foundations. Therefore, depending on the region where a NGO (foundation) is settled on, the requirements for information di sclosure can vary. In this paper we compare the different requirements that regions establish for their NGOs (charitable foundations) in the field of disclosure of information on social impact. And we also reflect on the adequacy of this information to the requirements of the stakeholders (donors, beneficiaries, community, ....)