The natural disasters of recent time have caused the people of Sweden to donate very large amounts of money to different fundraising organizations. With this in mind, we found it interesting to examine the extent of disclosure in the annual reports of the Swedish fundraising organizations. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify which factors that influences the extent of disclosure of accounting principles in the annual reports of Swedish fundraising organizations. To fulfill this purpose we conducted a content analysis of 149 annual reports from Swedish fundraising organizations. To help us explain the levels of disclosure we applied stakeholder theory, institutional theory and legitimacy theory. This study has revealed that the extent of disclosure of accounting principles in the annual reports of Swedish fundraising organizations is positively correlated with the size of the organization and whether the organization is a member of the Swedish fundraising council (FRII) or not.

Keywords: legitimacy theory, institutionalism, stakeholder theory, disclosure, non-profit organizations