Web disclosure of institutional information in nonprofit organizations: an approach in Portuguese charities

Given the specificity and importance of nonprofit organizations, there is a growing demand for financial and non-financial information. In this way, this paper will address the question of institutional disclosure through the web, of these specific organizations, particularly the Portuguese charities. Our central goal ascertains what type of information and what factors influence Portuguese charities in the information disclosure via Internet, bearing in mind that there are some variables that might influence the disclosure of information such as size, age and certification of financial reports. The main disclosure indicators will be listed so that we can identify the most visible types of information, as well as, the most important factors that influence information disclosure. So, a checklist will be proposed, which will be the starting point for the analysis of disclosure information published by the charities, besides a significant element to evaluate the degree of compliance with this specific index. To reach this goal we will do a quantitative content analysis to the web information published by the Portuguese charities. The main conclusions mention that most of the organizations under study disclose different types of information (financial and non-financial), in which financial information play a more relevant role, with the annual accounts disclosure index having the highest level of disclosure. Regarding the influencing elements of the disclosed information, the certification of accounts (external auditing) and organization size were identified as the most important ones.