Purpose-This paper seeks to investigate the influence of stakeholders on accountability relationships and the development of accounting practices and processes within two Tanzanian non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Design/methodology/approach- Stakeholder analysis is employed to evaluate the positions of stakeholder groups in terms of Mitchell et al.'s attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency. Data analysis was undertaken using a grounded theory approach. Findings-The research found that overseas donorsThis paper uses stakeholder theory to explore the nature and behaviour of different stakeholders in NGOs. The paper also explores the use of a stakeholder analysis to understand accounting practices within these organisations. Empirical literature on non governmental organisations is sparse within accounting and management disciplines. The paper presents an analysis of the interactions between organisational actors and stakeholders in two case studies. It gives an account of events and analyses the implications of stakeholder salience on accounting practices and processes in the organisations. A substantial literature exists which addresses the question 'who are stakeholders?' and a number of typologies have been suggested. However, the empirical descriptive component of stakeholder theory, that is the description and explanation of 'to what’ and ‘how' managers pay attention in stakeholder interactions (Jones, 1995; Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Mitchell et al., 1997; Frooman, 1999) has not received much attention. This paper is a contribution to that research.