 |
An International Meeting of American Accounting
Association
|
Sarbanes Oxley: Impact And Implications For Not-For-Profit Organizations |
Saleha Khumawala
The University of Houston
Daniel Neely
The University of Houston
Abstract: The Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) mandates an improved corporate governance structure and imposes criminal penalties on those organizations and individuals who attempt to obstruct justice by concealing fraudulent activities. This paper seeks to document the current impact of SOX on NFPs by reporting the results of 37 (73 still to be coded for a total of 110 projects) student projects documenting the frequency of adoption of the major provisions of SOX as well as providing first hand reports as to the impact of SOX on NFP organizations, and comparing the requirements of California’s Non-Profit Integrity Act with the recommendations of watchdog groups to determine how far the NFP sector has gone in implementing the Act’s provisions and what work remains to be done. We conclude that while states are beginning to mandate adoption, NFPs have not uniformly adopted the provisions of SOX.