The Problems And Solutions To Financial Information Disclosure Of Chinese Not-for-profit Organizations

With the occurring of credit crisis in not-for-profit organizations due to a serious of events happened in 2011,and the first proposing of social governance in the third session of the 18th Party Congress in 2013,not-for-profit organizations are known and caught public' s attention.However,the research on not-for-profit organizations in the domestic academic is not mature enough and the theory research couldn't meet the need of practice.In this background,this article studies not-for-profit organizations from the view of financial information disclosure.This article finds four problems in the financial information disclosure of Chinese not-for-profit organizations:there' re gaps between different organizations in financial information disclosure;the disclosure content is not complete;the disclosure is not timely;and there is lack of information system construction for financial information disclosure.The comparison between the Red Cross Society of China and Shanxi Shenmu Minsheng Charity Foundation is supporting analysis.The reasons to these problems involve many aspects,including internal and external factors:lack of organizational culture,values and self-consciousness;the government interference reduces autonomy and competitive awareness of not-for-profit organizations,and the governmental accounting system couldn't meet public' s needs of information;lack of talents and capital;imperfect internal governmence including system of financial information disclosure;deficient laws and regulations such as the differences in disclosure content,time,and receiving parties among different accounting systems for different kinds of organizations;and imperfect supervisions from government and the society:in the law enforcement,some governments fail to observe the law and refrain from punishing lawbreakers,which results little illegal cost and little motivation for organizations to cost expenses to obey the regulations;in the society supervision,there is no public recognized evaluation system to encourage the competition among not-for-profit organizations.This article also studies American regulations and practice to resolve our problems.Combing with the statement of financial position,statement of activities,statement of cash flows,statement of functional expenses,and the practice of American Red Cross,this article introduces the American regulations on financial information disclosure of not-for-profit organizations,and provides enlightenment to resolve problems in financial information disclosure of domestic not-for-profit organizations through the comparison between China and America.In the end,this article suggests some solutions to improving the financial information disclosure of not-for-profit organizations.According to the problems and reasons,and combing the practice in America,this article supposes the following suggestions:building organizational culture based on values to improve self-consciousness of disclosure;reforming the administrative system and reducing the intervention from governments to improve motivation and efficiency;improving internal governance and financial information disclosure system;improving the laws and regulations to build the unit and comparable system;and constructing the all-degree supervisions,such as increasing governmental supervision,reporting illegal behaviors to the public timely,improving the building of third party' s evaluation system to inform the supervision of public opinions,public' s choice,and open competitive environment for not-for-profit organizations.