(Via Instapundit)  Charity Navigator is a VERY cool site that Glenn linked to.   The Navigator stackranks several hundred charitable organizations using mutual fund-esque metrics.  

Charity Navigator, America’s premiere independent charity evaluator, works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace by evaluating   the financial health of America’s largest charities.

Their top 10 lists make for interesting reading...

Needless to say, I think charitable organizations can readily perform a TON of the roles that many folks instinctively allocate towards governments (the biggest exceptions to this rule so dutifully laid out in the Constitution, of course).   And this site demonstrates one of the best reasons.

Organizations that operate outside of the realm of state coercion are forced to be far more transparent and responsive to their constituency.   They have a much harder time hiding behind line items in a massive budget package.   They don't suffer from "monopoly of the good idea."  Head Start might be a generally Good Idea but bureaucratic dynamics will tend to grow one Head Start program to mammoth proportions rather than "fund" 3-4 experimental variations on Head Start to find the best implementation.

Via services like Charity Navigator, good, well-managed charities will thrive until they (almost inevitably) become lazy and squanderous.   At that point a new charity "startup" will enter the scene and rocket up the Navigator ranks.  

Of course, the charities at the bottom of the list will start complaining the same way business complain about Wall Street.   The numbers are too short term.   Our business is far more valuable than the numbers alone might suggest.   And so on.  It's tough to go from your cozy, manage-by-feel-good-morality environment into a tighter manage-by-results environment but hey, that's the real world.