The resource has been created for the International Forum of Accounting Standard Setters – a group of international standard setters and organisations that have close involvement in financial reporting issues. It brings together guidance on reporting methods for not-for-profits from around the world into one place. 

CIPFA chief executive Rob Whiteman said: “Despite the increasing importance of the not-for-profit sector globally there are still no international financial reporting standards to ensure that individual organisations can be held accountable in a comparable way.”

He said he hoped the tool would be “an important step towards this longer-term aim”.

The platform will help users compare what they are doing to what other not-for-profit organisations are doing. This should help improve best practice and enhance understanding of reporting practices in different jurisdictions.

IFASS chair Liesel Knorr said: “Reporting standards for not-for-profit entities remain of great interest to national standard setters.

“It is hoped the new platform and further work of the group contributes to the case for a single set of international reporting standards for the not-for-profit sector.”

The International Not for Profit Platform, developed specifically for IFASS’s not-for-profit working group, was launched at an IFASS meeting in London.