Web-Based Accountability among United Way of Texas Chapters
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Web-Based Accountability among United Way of Texas Chapters Aminata Sillah 1 & Julius A. Nukpezah 2
& Florence
Kamau 3
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The paper uses data from 68 United Way of Texas chapters with web presence to create three indicators for web-based accountability — (1) disclosure of performance information (2) responsiveness to stakeholders and (3) fiscal transparency— and to estimate their determinants using OLS regression. Among others, the study finds that web-based accountability determined by online disclosure of performance information is influenced by board size, whereas fiscal transparency is affected by paid staff. The study contributes to nonprofit accountability literature by showing the connectedness of webbased accountability indicators and the need for enhanced fiscal transparency in the nonprofit sector. Keywords Web-based accountability . Fiscal transparency . Responsiveness . Performance
information . Nonprofit governance . Nonprofit organizations
Introduction Demonstrating accountability is an ongoing struggle for the nonprofit sector (Keating and Frumkin, 2003). Scandals among large nonprofit organizations have caused the public to question the integrity of charitable organizations whose accountability * Julius A. Nukpezah [email protected] Aminata Sillah [email protected] Florence Kamau [email protected]
1
Department of Political Science, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA
2
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, 104 Bowen Hall, 456 Hardy Road, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA
3
Dallas County Community College District, Dallas, TX, USA
Sillah A. et al.
measures tend to lag those of government and private sectors (Styles and Koprowski, 2008). For example, United Way of America faced allegations of fraud and financial mismanagement of donated funds in the 1990s and 2000s. These scandals have brought the issue of accountability to the forefront amidst mounting criticisms of the assertion that nonprofit organizations can police themselves. Consequently, nonprofit organizations face the challenge of overcoming public uproar by adhering to higher standards of accountability that contribute to public trust by reporting expenditures, program outputs and outcomes, and governance issues (Candler and Dumont, 2010; Kearns, 1996). Recent developments in technology, particularly with social media and the Internet, provide nonprofit organizations with tools to establish and maintain relationships with stakeholders and address issues of accountability (Dainelli et al., 2013; Saxton and Guo, 2011). Because an increasing number of nonprofit organizations are adopting web-based technologies to promote accountability to stakeholders, scholars are giving more attention to this line of research (Hackler and Saxton, 2007; Saxton and Guo, 2009). Prior studies examine the adoption of web-based technologies, the indicators of web-based accountability, and the determinants of the adoption of these innovations. For i
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