By Suzanne Perry

Sen. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president last night with a pledge to ensure the government helps those in need, a philosophy that is likely to please nonprofit groups working for social causes.

“Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems,” the Illinois senator told a crowd of Democratic delegates and other supporters at Invesco Field, in Denver. “But what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves — protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.”

Mr. Obama rejected what he called the Republican philosophy of “you’re on your own” and said the “promise of America” rested on “the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.”

Attention will now turn to the Republicans, who are set to nominate Sen. John McCain as their candidate at a convention that begins Sunday in St. Paul. The Arizona senator announced today that he had selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate.

Senator Obama has already proposed several programs to help nonprofit organizations, including a Social Investment Fund Network to distribute government and private money to charities working on innovative projects and a Social Entrepreneurship Agency to improve coordination of federal programs that support nonprofit groups.

He has also pledged to expand AmeriCorps, the federal national-service program; increase money for early-childhood and after-school programs; and create “promise neighborhoods” in areas with high poverty and crime, modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, a New York charity.

Mr. Obama has had strong ties to nonprofit groups throughout his career. Before he became a politician, he directed the Developing Communities Project, a charity that helps needy Chicago neighborhoods, and Illinois Project Vote, which helped register African American and low-income voters in Cook County.

He was on the founding board of Public Allies, a charity that receives money from AmeriCorps and trains young people to become nonprofit leaders, and his wife, Michelle, became the first executive director of that group’s Chicago office in 1993.

To learn more about the views of Senators Obama and McCain on issues affecting nonprofit groups, see The Chronicle‘s Campaign 2008.