Australian Nonprofit Accounting Standards: Have your say!
Following on from the webinar series late last year, David Gilchrist from the centre of public value will be hosting a series of roundtables with community sector employees and volunteers to further discuss the future of accounting standards.
There are three roundtables taking place throughout February:
- Tuesday, February 7th, from 12noon to 1pm AEDT
- Wednesday, February 8th, from 12noon to 1pm AEDT
- Wednesday, February 22nd, from 12noon to 1pm AEDT
The financial reporting is an important accountability issue for nonprofits and charities. However, the current accounting standards—which are used to guide organisations in their financial reporting—are not necessarily fit-for-purpose in relation to nonprofit and charitable reporting. This adds complexity and cost to organisations that often do not have sufficient resources.
The Australian Accounting Standards Board is working hard to develop accounting standards that will represent greater value for Australia’s nonprofit and charitable organisations. As part of this process, they are seeking input form the sector to make sure they understand what the sector feels it needs and how best to establish fit-for-purpose standards in relation to what they call Tier 3 reporting. That is, financial reporting for smaller nonprofits and charities that turnover between $500,000 and $3m.
To help with this, the Board has issued a discussion paper which includes questions relating to their proposed changes. They have also issued a snap shot paper (available here) which provides an overview of the key changes proposed and discusses what the Board does not currently intend to change.
These round tables are designed to allow people from the sector to have input into this discussion. ICDA and the Centre for Public Value (website: here) will collate comments, questions and ideas from the round tables and forward them to the Accounting Standards Board in order to assist them in their work. Therefore, these round tables represent a real opportunity for the sector to comment and the Board is genuinely keen to get responses back.
If you intend to participate in a round table, it would be great if you could read the snap shot document and we will work through it to get your comments/perspectives for each area. The document is only short and its gives a great summary of the issues and proposed responses.
If you have any queries or cannot attend a planned round table but wish to provide comments, please contact David Gilchrist via email on [email protected].
We are seeking expressions of interest from those who would like to be involved in the roundtables. Please fill out the form below if you are interested and a member of the team will be in touch over the coming weeks.