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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the registered charities in New Zealand have adopted the principle‐based corporate governance practices similar to those adopted by the publicly‐listed companies and the effect corporate governance practices have on their financial performance measured by technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and quick ratio. The paper addresses four important questions: how registered charities in New Zealand are managed and controlled; whether the funds donated to registered charities are utilised effectively; the nature of the corporate governance practiced by registered charities in New Zealand; and the nature of compliance to the Charities Act 2005.

Panel data for the registered charities over the period 2008‐2010 are analysed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and Tobit model regression. Technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and quick ratio are used as the dependent variables.

The findings indicate that there is no reporting requirement for the registered charities under the Charities Act 2005 to report detailed information regarding the board make‐up, board committees, board meetings, etc. and therefore, registered charities have not reported such information. The results show also that board gender diversity is an important corporate governance mechanism to mitigate agency problem in charitable organisations in New Zealand. However, large board size and large donors have potential to increase agency costs in charitable organisations in New Zealand.

Caution should be exercised when interpreting and generalising the paper's results, as this study is a case study of registered charities in New Zealand and data comprised only large charities that have revenue over NZ$20 m. It should also be noted that there was a small sample size, which may have had a bearing on the results.

This study offers insights for policy makers and practitioners interested in adopting similar corporate governance practices within their country.

Within New Zealand, issues relating to management and control of charitable organisations are better understood and as a consequence, development of sector‐wise standards could be initiated.

This research is novel as it investigates the nature of corporate governance practices relating to the registered charities in New Zealand. The availability of data provided by Charities Commission made this research possible.

This empirical investigation aims to examine the approaches to “beneficiary marketing” adopted by a sample of charities in sectors such as homelessness, eating disorders, domestic violence, addiction, etc., and the possible antecedents and consequences of particular marketing styles.

A mail questionnaire was sent to the heads of 618 charities or their regional offices in the UK's 20 largest cities, resulting in 172 replies. It was hypothesised that a charity's competitive market situation influenced its level of market orientation and hence its adoption of relationship marketing vis‐à‐vis beneficiaries. The impacts on marketing behaviour of an organisation's “strategic intent” and the existence of innately competitive instincts among its senior managers were explored. Possible connections between, on the one hand, market orientation and relationship marketing in relation to beneficiaries and, on the other, the same tendencies in respect of a charity's financial supporters were examined.

The results suggested that certain competitive factors known to drive conduct in the commercial domain also affected the behaviour of many of the sample charities. Organisations in the sample that were market‐orientated in relation to fundraising were also market‐orientated when they marketed their services to beneficiaries. Equally, charities that practised relationship marketing vis‐à‐vis donors also applied relationship marketing to their beneficiary marketing activities.

The paper adds value to pre‐existing literature concerning the alleged existence of a significant link between market orientation and performance. Additionally the research discovered a powerful connection between relationship marketing and charity client satisfaction, implying the need for charity managers to develop effective beneficiary relationship‐marketing strategy.

To investigate possible linkages between the relationship marketing activities of charitable organisations and the calibres of the relationships that charities establish with their beneficiaries. Also to identify the specific relationship marketing functions that contribute most to the development of good relationships between charities and their beneficiary clients.

One hundred beneficiaries of UK “helping and caring” charities were questioned about their perceptions of the service quality of the organisations that had given them assistance, their satisfaction with a charity's services, the character of their relationship with the charity, and the calibres of five different forms of relationship marketing (e.g. advertising, database marketing) employed by the charity. A model was constructed and estimated using the method of partial least squares. Perceived service quality was measured via adaptations of the SERVQUAL instrument but without any assessments of the respondents' prior expectations concerning the services they would receive from an organisation.

Relationship marketing was found to represent an effective weapon for improving both relationship quality and beneficiaries' satisfaction with service provision. Charities that “listened” to their beneficiary clients (e.g. by encouraging feedback) and which interacted with them on a regular basis were regarded as being exceptionally good at relationship marketing. Relationship quality as well as actual service quality induced beneficiaries to want to recommend a charity to other people and to engage in positive word‐of‐mouth.

The configuration of the model meant that it was not possible to examine the consequences of reversing the assumption that satisfaction was the cause of perceived service quality and not vice versa.

The outcomes offer practical advice to charity managers regarding the manners in which they should pursue their relationship marketing activities. Charity managers need to be trained and competent in the techniques of relationship marketing. A genuine concern for building relationships should suffuse the entire organisation.

This is the first published study to explore the use of relationship marketing by charities in respect of their beneficiaries rather than their donors.

This paper aims to examine the accountability practices of large United Kingdom (UK) charities through public discourse.

Based on the ethical model of stakeholder theory, the paper develops a framework for classifying not‐for‐profit (NFP) accountability and analyzes the content of the annual reports and annual reviews of a sample of large UK charities using this framework.

The results suggest that contrary to the ethical model of stakeholder theory, the sample charities' accountability practices are motivated by a desire to legitimize their activities and present their organizations' activities in a positive light. These results contradict the raison d'être of NFP organizations (NFPOs) and the values that they espouse.

Understanding the nature of accountability reporting in NFPOs has important implications for preparers and policy makers involved in furthering the NFP agenda. New research needs to examine shifts in accountability practices over time and assess the impact of the recent self‐regulation developed to enhance sector accountability.

This paper contributes to the NFP accountability literature by: first, developing a framework of NFP accountability through public discourse using the ethical model of stakeholder theory; and second, advancing the understanding of the accountability practices of large UK charities.

Competition among charities for donor income has increased dramatically in recent years. Moreover, charities have to compete against each other for cause related marketing contracts with commercial enterprises and sponsorship deals, and must bid competitively for government grants. This empirical study explored attitudes and behaviour in relation to competitor analysis (CA) within a sample of 134 British charities. It examined, inter alia, the main sources and uses of CA information, internal stakeholders’ views on whether non‐profit organisations should compete, CA management methods, satisfaction with CA, and possible linkages between CA and fundraising performance. An important aim of the investigation was to establish whether the presence of certain factors known to affect the extent of competition (and by implication the intensity of CA) in purely commercial markets similarly influenced organisations in the charity sector. Conversely, internal stakeholder resistance to the idea that charities should compete against each other did not appear to modify the sample organisations’ actual CA behaviours in any way.

Although there exists an extensive literature concerning the factors that facilitate or inhibit organisational learning; scant attention has been devoted to the development of valid and reliable measures of the extents to which organisations actually exhibit propensities to learn. This paper introduces such an instrument (LEONORA ‐ LEarning OrgaNisation ORientAtion indicator) which the author applied to a sample of 291 organisations in a sector (large UK charities) wherein substantial numbers of learning organisations might reasonably be expected to be found. Results indicated that the proposed 26‐item scale is best represented by a factor structure comprising five distinct groupings of variables, involving: market and competitor research; innovation and the ability to accommodate change; teamwork and shared values; information generation and dissemination; and employee training. Overall the findings suggest that charities displaying the essential features of learning organisations have outperformed their rivals over recent years.

There is a longstanding debate over the role of modern business methods in the contemporary non-profit organisation (NPO). Critics of business practices assert that they may undermine the missions of NPOs. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate. Many accounting researchers have shifted research focus to concepts such as trust and crises. These are important topics. But they may overshadow practices which are taken for granted as accepted practice which does not merit re-examination.

This qualitative project is based on an initial survey followed by comparative case studies of three NPOs. The researchers have used both interviews and documentary analysis in this study.

The contention that the adoption of business-like practices undermines the fundamental aim of altruism of NPOs is challenged by the findings of this paper. The very concept of altruism is not a single unifying concept in NPOs – it is a contested idea. However, and most importantly, in this research there is no evidence of mission drift by NPOs which adopt business practices. This research highlights the way many NPO CEOs are mission-driven but also pragmatic bricoleurs in their consideration of new business practices. Most importantly, these case studies demonstrate a variation in practices within the participating organisations. This raises challenging questions about a receptive context for the adoption of new business practices which are explored in this paper.

The case studies in this paper are from the UK, and further studies in different operating contexts in other countries would be useful. In particular, the finding that the fundamental ethos of NPOs is not challenged by being business-like merits further research. There is also scope for further research on what constitutes a receptive context for the adoption of new business practices by NPOs.

This study reveals the potential significance of NPO boards, particularly non-executive directors, in the shaping of organisational practices. There is evidence in this study of NPOs recruiting business experts for purposes of legitimation. But this study also shows how business expertise can be mobilised to enhance NPO performance by bricoleurs in NPO who are highly motivated individuals who will adopt useful business practices to hand if they improve charity outcomes.

The NPO organisations are motivated by the desire to make a difference to the lives of people who are vulnerable or disadvantaged. This study has interesting implications for managers and directors of NPOs on their effectiveness.

This study challenges the critical view that becoming more business-like undermines the fundamental ethos of altruism in NPOs. This is an important finding, but this study also reveals the recruitment of business expertise by NPOs purely for purposes of legitimation. However, these legitimating practices differ from the well-established view of isomorphism in the field of NPOs and suggests that, on the contrary, there is a variation in practice within the NPO field which has important implications for donors, regulators, directors and managers of NPOs.

Describes some of the issues raised and problems encountered in an attempt to apply a market analysis to a non‐profit making organization. Applies a marketing approach in order to tackle the non‐profit making organizations more complex problems. Suggests that the marketing approach is very useful in this situation for three reasons it helps to make objectives explicit; it helps create better criteria for the organization; and it helps bring detailed marketing activities to the company.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of senior accounting officers on governance, performance and accountability issues in the charity sector.

The empirical data presented in this paper were collected via a mail‐out survey to Chief Financial Officers (CFO) of large charity organisations in Australia.

The executives surveyed agreed that the public is entitled to receive high quality financial disclosures from charities, favouring “programme accountability”, “fiscal accountability” and “profit” as relevant performance indicators rather than cash surplus/deficit. The respondents also considered that charities warrant a dedicated accounting standard but were less enthusiastic about an independent regulator with stronger control functions.

The data in this study report the opinions of financial executives which may not represent the view of all managing executives.

While governance in charities has been examined previously from an organisational or management perspective, this is one of the few papers that emphasises how members of the accounting profession view this important topic.

A charity’s core purpose is legally mandated and delivery thereof is not a corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity which, by definition, is voluntary in nature. Any CSR activity not required by law should be “incidental” and be an outcome of a core purpose/object and not a focus of activity. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to address the lack of research into voluntary CSR activities conducted by charities so that charities might have a clearer operating platform and do not involuntarily contravene legislation.

This was an exploratory investigation using purposive sampling of senior leaders in UK charities. This study uses a case study approach to identify pragmatic areas of concern and also identify practical actions.

The conventional hierarchical ordering of Carroll’s CSR pyramid (1991) for profit-focussed organisations were found to be inconsistent with those for charitable organisations which were: ethical, legal, economic and philanthropic/voluntary/incidental.

This was an exploratory study and would benefit from further investigation.

Corporate social responsibility actions undertaken by charities need to be carefully evaluated to ensure that they comply with the core charitable purpose or are incidental.

Many employees in charities are motivated by social justice; however, they need to be cautious that they do not exceed the core purpose of the charity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research was identified which has addressed the fundamental issue of charities’ core purposes and the extent to which charities might legally undertake CSR activities.