Assessing the Effect of Transparency and Accountability in Mitigating Nonprofit Organisations’ Reputation Risk in Zambia

This paper assesses the effect of transparency and accountability on the reputation risk of nonprofit organisations (NPOs) in Zambia. NPOs, by their nature, attract many stakeholders with various perspectives, which poses some potential for reputation risk. Drawing on a mixed-methods study of 247 respondents from multiple non-profit organisations (NPOs) in Zambia, this paper demonstrates that NPOs can leverage transparent and accountable practices to mitigate reputation risk. The results indicate that transparency and accountability can be used as tools for the sustainability of NPOs, thereby avoiding being viewed as a demanding ethos by stakeholders. These practices can be effectively used to turn the stakeholders into ambassadors of goodwill, hence leading to the growth of an NPO. The article aims to encourage NPO practitioners to take an interest in the potential damage that negative perceptions may cause and to practically apply the practices of transparency and accountability to mitigate it.