Devarajan, the founder of CSIM, told CE that the need for social accounting and audit is to make the NGOs efficient and visible.

“It allows an enterprise to build on its existing monitoring, documentation and reporting systems to develop a process whereby it can account fully for its social, environmental and economic impacts,” he said.

Devrajan said that there were many NGOs that were registered but not all of them were functioning efficiently. According to the Home Ministry figures of 2008-09, the State has the highest number of NGOs in the country. The Union Home Ministry figure states that the State alone has 3,123 NGOs.

Social auditor Latha Suresh said that the Social Audit Network was planning to have a tie-up with the Union government to do social audit of Panchayat Raj institutions.

Alan Kay, co-founder of the social audit network, UK, says that charity institutions are being monitored in the UK.

“The monitoring agency ensures that the NGO is really delivering a service and how it benefits society.”

Latha says the course is being conducted to evolve a fresh group of social auditors.

“The objective of the programme is to initiate a group of practitioners into the science and art of Social Accounting an Audit (SAA) by combining theory, examples and practice in a way that will ensure the participants are well versed with the principles underpinning the process as well as solutions to the practical challenges that arise out of undertaking SAA in organisations,” she said.