The agreement with the public includes the agreement that a missed filing results in a fine, not in revocation of their protections and privileges.
But more generally - my claim is that if the public wants a deal with charities where they must be flawless, that's a bad deal for the public. Effective people will make mistakes sometimes, ranging from missing a filing deadline to hiring people who end up not good at their job to trying some charitable activity that ends up not working. If we hold them to a standard of perfection, the rational activity of the people behind the charity is to just do something else. Is that good for us?
Of course we want them to be accountable - I'm not arguing that they should be able to do whatever, and they should try to meet all these requirements, that's why we the public encoded the requirements in the first place. I'm arguing that there's a big difference between accountability and expecting perfection.
But more generally - my claim is that if the public wants a deal with charities where they must be flawless, that's a bad deal for the public. Effective people will make mistakes sometimes, ranging from missing a filing deadline to hiring people who end up not good at their job to trying some charitable activity that ends up not working. If we hold them to a standard of perfection, the rational activity of the people behind the charity is to just do something else. Is that good for us?
Of course we want them to be accountable - I'm not arguing that they should be able to do whatever, and they should try to meet all these requirements, that's why we the public encoded the requirements in the first place. I'm arguing that there's a big difference between accountability and expecting perfection.