I think it's unfortunate that "good" and "nonprofit" are so closely linked in the popular imagination. Profitable enterprises deserve the benefit of the doubt: they do good unless proven otherwise. (It is often otherwise; it's likely, for example, that firms such as Coke and McDonald's—not to mention banks and many other financial firms—do net harm.) On the other hand, nonprofits—by definition lacking profit—have no such a priori evidence of doing good. They thus deserve extra scrutiny.

In order to be able to evaluate nonprofits more accurately, it would be helpful if they answered the following questions:

(1) What are your goals?

(2) What would constitute meeting your goals?

(3) What is an acceptable cost (in time, money, and attention) to achieve your goals?

(4) What are your plans if you fail to meet your goals at an acceptable cost?

(5) If you end up doing more harm than good, how will you know, and what do you plan to do about it?