Auditing nonprofit entities

Auditing plays a key monitoring role in nonprofit governance. We discuss the demand for nonprofit sector auditing, including state and federal audit requirements; audit outcomes; impacts of audit outcomes on donor decisions; issues concerning audit quality; and other measures associated with audit performance including audit pricing and delivery of non-audit services. We summarize several broad lines of nonprofit audit research and draw parallels with findings from the governmental sector and commercial audit markets. Nonprofit audit research addresses questions such as (1) the cost of audit requirements and determinants of overall audit costs; (2) voluntarily contracting for auditing services; (3) impacts of auditing on reporting quality; (4) audit risk factors unique to nonprofit auditing; and (5) nonprofit internal control environments, including controls to prevent and detect fraud. Lastly, we identify opportunities for future research.