FASB's Not-for-Profit Financial Reporting Project: Analysis of Letters to ASU 2016-14 Exposure Draft

Abstract

In 2015, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued an Exposure Draft (ED) as part of its first significant project in over 20 years on financial reporting by Not-for-Profit organizations (NFP). In this study, we categorize the 264 letters received on the ED by the type of respondent and analyze the responses using ANOVA, multiple comparisons tests, and multidimensional scaling. Ultimately, as Phase 1 of its NFP project, FASB issued accounting standards update (ASU) 2016-14 containing proposed changes supported by a majority of the respondents to the ED. The Board deferred recommended changes with less support from respondents to Phase 2 of the project. Although constituents often accuse accounting standard setters of standards-overload and for being unresponsive to their comments (Herz 2003), our findings indicate otherwise.Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.JEL Classifications: G00; L31; M40.