Social Accounting
Social accounting and auditing is a way of measuring and reporting on an organisation's social and ethical performance. An organisation which takes on an audit makes itself accountable to its stakeholders and commits itself to following the audits recommendations.The New Economics Foundation (nef) helped to make this a mainstream approach and demonstrated how these approaches enable companies to manage more effectively. From 1995 to 2000 nef carried out a series of pioneering social audits of companies (Camelot, The Body Shop, Traidcraft, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, Ben and Jerry's) as well as international public and voluntary sector organisations.
Having led the development of the method with these organisations, nef helped to form the Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability to promote professional standards around social accounting and auditing.
Under the Social Enterprise Quality & Impact Project, nef has also worked in partnership with the Social Audit Network on a framework for social accounting that is 'scale-able' and appropriate for smaller social enterprises and community organisations.
The SAN social accounting and Audit process consists of Three Steps, preceded by a Getting Ready stage. To find out more visit http://www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk/what%202.htm
For a live example of social audited accounts, visit
Traidcraft http://www.traidcraft.co.uk/about_traidcraft/social_accounts/