Wellington Zoo Case Study

Introduction
Accountability is an obligation that has to be fulfilled by not-for-profit organizations that benefit the public. Not-for-profit organizations are always established with the primary objective of serving the society by providing goods and services that benefit the community with no expectations for profits. Therefore, they are always faced with the responsibility of providing both non-financial and financial information with enough details that can help the providers of funds and other stakeholders gain a deeper understanding of their primary objectives as well as their performance. However, many not-for profits entities always fail in the area of accountability when it comes to the handling of public money as evidenced by the

One problem is that the assets of Wellington Zoo are not owned by the Wellington Zoo Trust but are securely held by the City Council making it hard to determine the exact value of the zoo assets. This makes it hard for stakeholders to ascertain the real value of assets attributed to the zoo because the split between the custody of the assets and the zoo operations makes it hard to determine the exact financial position of the zoo (Hooks, 2012).
Contributions by volunteers form a very important resource for not-for-profit organizations. Recognition of such input should be adequately disclosed in the annual reports thus forming a key accountability obligation for such entities. However, the main problem facing Wellington zoo in its accountability is that the entity does not have a formal structure for volunteers and therefore information regarding the social impact of volunteers is not provided in the annual reports of Wellington Zoo (Hooks,

It is therefore important for Wellington Zoo to make the necessary improvements in the provision of information in its annual reports so as to meet the best practice reporting so as to eliminate the existing shortcomings as it strives to be accountable in its zoo