Interesting article from the NY Times about demands for accountability in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The article states there are "millions" of them worldwide, which sounds like an overstatement. However, it may not be too far from wrong if you count charities ran by individual temples, churches, and mosques around the world. There are a lot of them.

Wanting to know how a charity or foundation spends the millions it collects, or, more important, whether the programs it runs do any good, would seem reasonable, even necessary, to most people.

But reasonableness and need have never been sufficient to put ideas into practice. There are millions of these groups — commonly referred to as nongovernmental organizations, or NGO's — worldwide, but few are subjected to that kind of meaningful oversight, say the specialists studying NGO accountability.

For some advocates that lack of oversight is a blessing. "Any attempt to explain, formalize and/or hold accountable the NGO community is dangerous," writes Rob Gray, a professor at the Center for Social and Environmental Accounting Research at Glasgow University, in response to the report "The 21st Century NGO: In the Market for Change." That study, published in June by SustainAbility, an international consulting company, concluded that an "accountability squeeze" was one of the major challenges facing nonprofit organizations.

Even activists like Ralph Nader and the anti-globalization firebrand Naomi Klein, who have often been at the forefront of efforts demanding accountability from corporations and governments, have lashed out at calls for holding NGO's similarly responsible. Mr. Nader, for example, objected to a new NGO Watch Web site (ngowatch.org) created this summer by the conservative American Enterprise Institute — itself an NGO — as a politically motivated effort to "go after liberal or progressive NGO's." Ms. Klein likened it to a "McCarthyite blacklist." So far the Web site lists more than 160 NGO's, with links to information about their finances, support and programs

I remember there was some controversy not too long ago when Bill Gates announced he was going to donate billions for improving health care. He mentioned that his foundation was going to make grants based on the effectiveness of the programs. The NGOs really wanted his money with no strings attached and were pretty upset at Gates' demand for accountability.