How can you operate more transparently, build organizational trust, and create a stronger link to your key stakeholders including donors, supporters, staff and volunteers, program participants and the community at large? Here’s a quick checklist of some basic things to consider:

1. Don’t fear the media, cultivate them. More on media engagement.
2. Set public goals for fundraising, programs and publicly share your dashboards. More on dashboards.
3. Make it easy for people to access information and bios about your key Board and staff leaders. See a great example of Board and staff bios at zerodivide.org.
4. Put links to at least the past three years of tax returns (990s if U.S.-based), audited financials, and annual reports on your website, and share them on social media like Facebook and Twitter. More social media starter resources for nonprofits and NGOs.
5. Post your tax-exempt status letters (in the U.S this is a tax determination from the IRS and you may also have one from your State) and provide them to anyone who asks for them. This is publicly available information that most donors and funders will require. Why make it hard for them?
6. Involve your key stakeholders in critical decisions by holding donor forums and program participant focus groups.
7. Survey the community, or better yet, actually engage the community as shared resource for expertise, guidance, and decision-making. See how the Community Driven Institute is doing this.
8. Don’t protect your Board, staff team and key volunteers by withholding information. Fully engage the team, not only by sharing both good and bad news, but by asking for their input, valuing their feedback and expertise, and including them in decision-making.

Additional Resources on Nonprofit and NGO Transparency:

• GuideStar’s Transparency Report: The State of Nonprofit Transparency, 2008, Voluntary Disclosure Practices
• Strengthening Transparency, Governance, and Accountability of Charitable Organizations: A Final Report to Congress and the Nonprofit Sector by the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector convened by Independent Sector and its supplement.
• Podcast on Organisational Transparency in the Nonprofit Sector by Andrew Hewett, Executive Director of Oxfam Australia from Queensland University.
• Best Links: Nonprofit Transparency to Reducing Donor Attrition complied by Joanne Fritz on About.com.
•  Lessons learned from "radical transparency" by Kjerstin Erickson, the founder of FORGE.