Openness and transparency of the activities of socially oriented nonprofit organizations

<p>In this paper were investigated the openness and transparency of the socially-oriented non-profit organizations. Nonprofit organizations are an important element of social and economic development of Russian Federation and active participants in the development of civil society, being one of its institutions.</p><p><em>The purpose</em> of this study is to analyze the level of transparency and of the activities of socially oriented nonprofit organizations, identify the main causes of the lack of transparency and to find solutions of this problem. Following tasks were set to achieve this purpose:</p><ul><li>to learn the principles of openness and transparency of non-profit organizations;</li><li>to identify the major barriers to transparency and methods&nbsp; to improve&nbsp;&nbsp; transparency and accountability;</li><li>to determine the level of informational availability of NPOs through monitoring of sites &nbsp;of socially oriented non-profit organizations in Russia;</li><li>identify methods to improve the level of transparency;</li></ul><p><em>The object</em> of this study is transparency and openness of socially oriented nonprofit organizations. <em>The subject</em> of this study is the level of development of transparency and openness of socially oriented nonprofit organizations.</p><p><em>Scientific novelty</em> of this study is to apply a new, recently developed methodology of studying the transparency and openness of non-profit organizations, called Web content analysis.</p><p><em>Research methodology</em>. In the study of the sites of SO NPO to calculate the level of transparency and openness, was used the method of web content analysis, which involves an analysis of the content of Internet sites to determine the presence or absence of certain parameters of transparency and openness. In this paper were analyzed the sites of SO NPOs - winners of the contest of the Ministry of Economic Development in 2013</p><p>This study allowed making the conclusion about the current situation in the nonprofit sector, to identify the level of openness and accessibility of information and the relationship between the size of the organization, its transparency and efficiency of the organization. Thus the following findings were obtained:</p><ul><li>the most famous SO NPOs - recipients of the state financial support are more transparent and open;</li><li>but there are not statistical correlation between the level of openness and transparency and a degree of fame in SO NPOs;</li><li>most of the organizations receiving financial support from the state are not sufficiently open and transparent and have coefficient of information availability below 60%.</li></ul>