I frequently question the charitability of institutions so called "nonprofit" but whose activities appear anything but charitable. Usually of course, hospitals and those big fancy academic institutions come to mind -- really big places (good for scale and efficiency) with really high price tags (you get what you pay for) but very little access by those who have few or no resources.
Well, in Britain there's this quasi governmental body called the Charity Commission. According to the Commission's web site, "the Charity Commission for England and Wales is a non-Ministerial Government Department, part of the Civil Service. The Commission is completely independent of Ministerial influence and also independent from the sector it regulates. It has a number of quasi-judicial functions where it uses powers similar to those of the High Court".
What I like most about this Commission is it keeps its eye on the charitability of non-profits (NGO's), kind-of like the IRS except it pays far more attention to how much charitable service an NGO is providing. Two institutions its seems particularly interested in are private schools and arts organizations. Recently, from the ThirdSector we learned that the Commission just signed-off saying that two schools, after changing some policies and practices, have now met the Commission's public benefit test and can continue to operate with their charitable license. Four other arts organizations were also approved.
I'd like to see the IRS adopt this position of determining more proactively whether US nonprofits are meeting their public benefit test. I'd like nonprofit boards to have to annually report how this is going and annually establish a plan to establish and achieve bublic benefit goals. As the Sector, thanks pretty much to funders, has advanced in the area of being results focused, we might now be equally ready to document those results in such a way that the IRS or other entity can ensure public benefits accrue at levels sufficent to justify the public's investement (tax exemptions).