Providing effective disaster relief around the world is a challenge at the best of times, but how do charities cope with a growing responsibility for proper accounting and ever-closer stakeholder scrutiny? Alex Blyth.

It seems as though there is a new disaster every week. Already in 2008 there has been the flooding in Burma and Bangladesh, and the earthquake in China. Those are just the three disasters that have been large enough to capture the attention of our media. Across the world there has also been flooding in Ukraine and Romania, a landslide in Guatemala, an earthquake in Colombia, and an avalanche in Afghanistan.