The accountability paradigm: Standards of excellence

Abstract

Accountability is a critical issue in the management and governance of third sector organizations and is a recent phenomenon inside Hungarian civil society. Accountability is contradictory in nature and in practice can take a number of forms. Related issues are discussed in the theoretical part of this paper. Its analytical part introduces an accountability initiative designed for Hungarian third sector organizations. The proposed framework defines six main prescriptive accountability standards with corresponding criteria and recommendations that show how the standards can be met. The article presents how this self-assessment initiative was tested and justified with illustrations and lessons from the field.

Key words:

• Non-profit accountability
• Hungary
• standards
• self-assessment
• governance
• responsibility