Executive Vice President's Report from the 1998 Annual Report
Nonprofit organizations play a major social, cultural, and economic role in American life, and in recent years have assumed increasing responsibility for maintaining society's safety net in an era of constrained government budgets. At the same time, periodic failures—even scandals—involving nonprofit management have drawn attention to the need for stronger internal mechanisms to assure the accountability and performance of these organizations. A growing body of literature is beginning to describe the challenges of managing and monitoring nonprofit organizations, and several research centers are now cultivating the very young field of nonprofit management. Nonprofit boards and managers, as well as government contractors and regulators, are increasingly alert to issues of accountability and performance.
