What do you understand by Social Audit ? State the implications of Social Audit.

Social Audit Means A Social Audit is a way of measuring, understanding, reporting and ultimately improving an organization's social and ethical performance. A social audit helps to narrow gaps between vision/goal and reality, between efficiency and effectiveness. It is a technique to understand, measure, verify, report on and to improve the social performance of the organization. Social auditing creates an impact upon governance. It values the voice of stakeholders, including marginalized/poor groups whose voices are rarely heard. Social auditing is taken up for the purpose of enhancing local governance, particularly for strengthening accountability and transparency in local bodies. Social audit is a process of reviewing official records and determining whether the reported expenditures reflect the actual money spent on the ground. A social audit is a formal review of a company's endeavors in social responsibility. A social audit is an official evaluation of an organization's involvement in social responsibility projects or endeavors. For example, a local family store makes a clothing donation to a NGO that has a homeless shelter for women and children. The store makes a similar donation three times a year. This is something that a social audit might uncover. Factors examined by a social audit include records of charitable contributions, volunteer events, and efficient utilization of energy, transparency, work environment, and employees' wages. Implications of Social Audit Social auditing creates an impact upon governance. It values the voice of stakeholders, including marginalized/poor groups whose voices are rarely heard. Social auditing is taken up for the purpose of enhancing local governance, particularly for strengthening accountability and transparency in local bodies. Social Audit makes it sure that in democracy, the powers of decision makers should be used as far as possible with the consent and understanding of all concerned.