And what about the endowed grantmaking trusts?

Continuing to think about what the Charity Commission ought to be doing, I've been wondering why no-one ever questions the regime for regulating endowed grantmaking trusts. What is the justification for using rules designed principally to protect the public from the misuse of funds raised directly from them, to regulate organisations which don't raise any money from the public? This isn't an argument for a light touch approach to the foundations - after all, they benefit from the same tax privileges as fundraising charities, and ought to be accountable for how they spend their money. And that's where it gets interesting. There's a growing school of thought (see the membership of the Woburn Place Collaborative ) that institutional philanthropy, being mostly the fruits of social injustice, ought to be about social justice, rather than what is colloquially thought of as 'charity'. So the foundations should need to show the regulator that they've spent their money in pursuit of social change/social justice, rather than maintaining the status quo. Which would make a large chunk of endowed foundation grant-making ultra vires. Now, I don't expect an imminent call from Dame Suzi along the lines of "Gosh, Steven, we'd never thought of that - of course, you're absolutely right and we will immediately go after the trusts which just support social welfare without any emphasis on changing the circumstances which give rise to the need for the welfare in the first place - thankyou for pointing this out. Would you like a peerage?". But as I said at the start, unless I've missed something, noone ever seems to discuss this issue. As Mrs Merton used to say "Let's have a heated debate...".