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This study seeks to explore the financial priorities, financial planning and control practices in locally‐established voluntary organisations (LVOs) in a developing country context.

Two data collection methods are used to gather views from the LVO treasurers: a questionnaire survey and face‐to‐face interviews.

Treasurers are less focused on priorities involving internal planning and control and are found to be using financial planning and control practices to a limited and seemingly unsophisticated extent. In consideration of the theoretical implications of organizational legitimacy, overall findings suggest that internal practices are: extensively used to convey a symbolic message of rationality, in the pursuit of a pragmatic or a moral form of legitimacy towards a defined funding body or towards a perceived internal target audience, respectively; used in a limited and informal way due to their perceived inappropriateness in legitimating organizations, in “deference” to the voluntary organizations' (VO) primary social objectives; or are virtually inexistent, due to the strong influence of trust embedded in an “emotional‐led” context, thereby explaining the irrelevance of financial/control practices – even for symbolic reasons.

The questionnaire response rate has been relatively low but the findings are enhanced by the diversity of organizations which participated in the questionnaire and interview stages.

This study focuses on locally established organizations in a developing country context, which are typically less subjected to VO regulation and are “managed” by (unpaid) volunteers. The interviews involved a cross‐section of LVOs, which has been instrumental in contemplating the potential relevance of the legitimacy perspective.