By: Luis Gerardo Ramírez Villela
Civil society organizations carry out their day-to-day operations in accordance with the ordinary operations of any commercial corporation and for such reason they must consider it essential to carry out their corporate governance in the best possible way for the benefit of their associates and to be able to obtain donations for its causes.
Regardless of the legal provisions applicable to each type of organization, they must carry out the implementation of their strategy to implement the appropriate internal and external regulations for due operations not only from a legal perspective, but also from an accounting and tax point of view.
For such purposes, associates and people who work in a civil society organization must know the main rights and obligations of such organization and be familiar with its operational structure through knowledge of the corporate by-laws and general corporate principles applicable to authorized donees (if such organization is authorization as a donor or is processing it).
Likewise, they must consider being up to date on their corporate and contractual issues, and cover any aspects of ethics, compensation and risk management, as well as other strategic areas depending on their main non-profit activity. In this sense, greater importance should be given to the tax aspect in the case of authorized donees so as not to run any risk in getting their authorization revoked.
In this specific case, the fundamental principles would be the same as for any commercial corporation, understanding that they do not have a for-profit activity as mentioned below:
Transparency Associates/partners must have all the information and documentation necessary to manage any risk or potential risk that may arise in their activities.
Responsibility – The Board of Directors must report on the activities that the organization has carried out and analyze its operational results to implement new strategies for obtaining donations.
Accountability The Board of Directors must explain the purpose of the organization's activities clearly and describe the results of its performance to generate trust with the public in general.
It is very important that civil society organizations obtain adequate advice not only on legal issues but also on accounting and tax issues, since failure to comply with any of their obligations can have consequences for the cause that each organization supports and, in some cases, case, even being revoked their authorization as a donee.
