Best Practices for Nonprofits’ Internal Control Self-Assessment

The objective of this paper is to compile a stepwise menu of tasks that allow nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to self-assess the operation of previously assembled internal control policies and procedures, and to do so at any given size and stage during its life cycle. After self-assessing policies and procedures, the nonprofit organization can provide to stakeholders evidence of efficiency in its backroom operations, which in turn allows the organization to effectively operate its said mission and build capacity. An analysis of Copedia’s Non Profit Edition policies and procedures manual template library and its internal control assessment tool yielded the following results for four defined sizes of NPOs. For Small NPOs, 80 Unique Tasks allow a small NPO to self-assess its internal controls when the organization’s activities are viewed as a whole. For Medium NPOs, 107 Unique Self-Assessment Tasks are needed to assess activities. For Large NPOs, 130 Unique Tasks allow a Large NPO to self-assess its internal controls. Finally, 143 Unique Tasks allow an Extra-Large NPO to self-assess its internal controls when the organization’s activities are viewed as a whole.