Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

All of the information is already public. Unlike private citizens and business entities, whose tax returns are private, tax exempt organizations must file annual income and expense reports that are made public. It is called Form 990 and anyone can access them. They are also how the IRS tracks whether an organization is complying with the limits on income sources and expenditures that allow the tax exempt status to continue.

You also need to realize that many of these reports you hear on the internet about these organizations finances are hoaxes. If you go to a reputable site and check their information you will find that Susan B. Komen gets a score of 70 for financial responsibility and transparency and Wounded Warrior gets a 90. And bear in mind, any organization that gets a score of even 1 is still (barely) qualified to be a charity. So 70 is a high score; 90 is excellent.

You also need to bear in mind that high executive compensation is not necessarily a mark of a bad charity. The top paid executive at Susan B. Komen, for example, made $480,784 in compensation and benefits for the last reported year. That sounds really high. But you need to realize that Susan B. Komen is an international organization with an annual budget of over a quarter of a billion dollars and assets under management (investments) of almost $200 million that generate funds for the organization on top of fundraising. Try finding a CEO of a for-profit business of that size that doesn't make double that, at least.

The IRS is the agency that is responsible for monitoring compliance with the tax exemption rules. They track the Form 990 filings for compliance, and as with private and business returns, they sometimes will audit them. There is nothing in the rules, however, that require any specific percentage of revenues go to programs. There are rules on the ratio of compensation of top executives to total expenses, but as long as those are not exceeded, the fact that an organization is spending a lot of money on staff and fundraising rather than programs is not per se a violation of the rules. If there is actual fraud in the fundraising, that is the jurisdiction of the Attorney General in the state(s) in which the charity operates.

Lastly, no, you can't sue anymore than you can prosecute a criminal case yourself or as a class. Certain laws can only be enforced by the government. What you CAN do as a citizen is stay informed. The information from the IRS Form 990 filings and other relevant information about charities is organized and available online from groups such as Guidestar and Charity Navigator. The best way to put bad charities out of business is to know who they REALLY are, not what some web meme may say, and starve them of funds.