Good governance policies became the rage in the wake of the Enron scandal and other instances of corruption, including several in the non-profit sector. Now the new thing is to “go green,” as well we should, considering we have only one planet to live on.

But as the song says, “It's Not Easy Being Green,” so not every institution is completely on board with it, even among traditional do-gooder charities. I have a solution. If the IRS wants a quick fix for getting non-profits to “green” their operations, it should do for the environment what it did for non-profit governance–just add a few questions to Form 990.

As I noted last month (“Passive-Aggressive Regulation,” March 2009), even though it had no statutory authority to impose new obligations, the IRS added several new questions for every charity to answer about governance issues. Since no tax lawyer in her right mind wants to answer “no” to any of the questions, the new form effectively prods the entire sector to create policies on issues including conflicts of interest, whistleblower protections and document retention. And they're doing it, even though the form itself says, “[This section requests] information about policies not required by the Internal Revenue Service” [emphasis added].