Advancing Excellence in Public Finance.

• Date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Morrill, Christopher P.

Since our founding in 1906, GFOA has focused on improving the quality of governmental accounting and financial reporting. Early efforts focused on setting norms and guidelines for meeting the specific accounting and financial reporting needs of state and local government, and over several decades, GFOA worked to create generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for government--work that ultimately led to the creation of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) in 1984.

GFOA also has a long history of encouraging governments to adopt these standards through education and peer recognition. In 1945, we created the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting, commonly known as the CAFR Award Program. In 1980, GFOA redesigned Governmental Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Reporting (the Blue Book) to help financial statement preparers develop comprehensive annual financial reports that represented the most current...