Jeff Trexler, a professor of social entrepreneurship at Pace University, writes on the blog JustMeans that there aren’t enough books that can provide students with a good introduction to the subject. Much of the literature on social entrepreneurship tends to be too uncritical, he says.

But Mr. Trexler notes two new books that are exceptions. First is Arthur C. Brooks’s Social Entrepreneurship: A Modern Approach to Social Value, which Mr. Trexler says “blends solid strategic advice from entrepreneurial practice with real-world examples from charitable businesses.”

The second book is the Urban Institute’s new collection on Nonprofits and Business. Mr. Trexler’s says the collection of essays looks at new trends, laws, and best practices.

Are there other books on social entrepreneurship that would suggest?

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, has a blog post about the Madoff scandal’s impact on foundations. The post includes a link to a list that a friend of his (Daniel E. Smith, president of Benefit Technology) compiled for Mr. Kristof.

The 14-page list includes the names of 147 foundations who had at least some of their money wiped out by Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Mr. Kristof notes that, interestingly, Mr. Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew, did not invest their philanthropic dollars with their father. They also used big accounting firms.

By contrast, most of the foundations on the list shared the same accounting firms, which tended to be small. Mr. Kristof wonders if the accountants should have been looking more skeptically at the kinds of trades supposedly done by Mr. Madoff.

He also says the philanthropic world should “wonder if there aren’t more Madoffs out...

Alanna Skaikh, an expert on global-health issues, says that international-development and aid work is stuck in a “culture of nice.” Writing on her blog Blood and Milk, she says that a reluctance to label shoddy programs and poor-performing organizations as “bad” keeps bad programs from being cut and good ones from being improved.

So why are people who have no problem calling out a “bad” product — she cites Windows Vista — unable to stomach outing poor charitable projects?

One reason, according to Ms. Shaikh, is that when good people are trying to serve others, it’s difficult to point out that they’re not doing the best job of it. Also, every project benefits at least one or two people. And she says that no one wants to be the person who says that handful of individuals aren’t worth the effort.

Also, charity employees tend to move around among different jobs and organizations. ...

A powerful experience or a grotesque poverty theme park?

Opinions are divided about an effort to get participants at this year’s World Economic Forum, in Davis, Switzerland, to empathize with impoverished refugees.

A so-called refugee run has been set up at the Alps event to allow the wealthy and powerful to experience, if only for an hour or so, what it feels like to live in a refugee camp, cross a minefield, and face an attack by violent rebels.

The simulation was sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and developed by the Crossroads Foundation, a Hong Kong charity.

For Andrew Ross Sorkin, a reporter for The New York Times, navigating the refugee run at Davos was an eye-opening experience.

“In three different rooms, tents were set up, with chained-link fences and barbed wire surrounding the area to simulate a refugee camp. All participants were...

A New York Times opinion article about how philanthropists should save newspapers made Allison Fine want to throw her paper back out into the snow.

Ms. Fine, an expert on nonprofit technology and communications and the host of the Chronicle‘s Social Good podcast, writes on her blog that endowing newspapers and giving them nonprofit status is a “stupid idea.”

She takes issue with the article’s premise that because the Internet, in the words of Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, has the potential to be a “cesspool” of misinformation, print newspapers must be saved.

Of course false information is available online, says Ms. Fine, but it also survives on television, the radio, and in many print publications. That doesn’t mean that many bloggers and Web journalists aren’t doing a good job of exposing truths and providing accurate information.

She also finds fault with the...

Clean water and sanitation is not an easy sell.

So says John Sauer, communications director at Water Advocates, a Washington charity that seeks to promote the problems caused by the lack of good plumbing and potable water in poor areas of the world.

On The Huffington Post, Mr. Sauer writes to generate public interest in the 25 or so diseases triggered by unsafe water, they be lumped together under a more eye-grabbing title. He suggests “no-plumbing disease.”

“We would then see that no-plumbing disease kills more children than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB combined. We would see the truth of this ugly situation; the relentless outbreaks of diarrhea that, when they don’t kill kids, weaken them month after month — the instances of a single child, for example, suffering a dozen bouts of it per year, the ensuing malnutrition, the family’s economic burden of curing the child, the impact...

Nonprofit groups are facing some easy-to-identify challenges with the recession — decreases in donations from individuals, dwindling endowments, and declines in government support.

But Kelly Kleiman, a former nonprofit consultant and author of The Nonprofiteer, notes that charities are facing some other, less visible, losses.

Ms. Kleiman notes that declines in retail sales are likely to cut into the money some charities earn from corporate marketing arrangements in which they receive a portion of the revenues from the sale of products.

She also points to a recent New York Times article that some nonprofit groups that organizations that rely on the interest earned from lawyers’ trust accounts to pay for legal services for low-income clients are facing revenue shortfalls. With interest rates sagging, the amount of money generated from these accounts has dwindled.

“Eventually...

A foundation effort to support local news is raising questions about the growing role of philanthropic support for the American press.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami, awarded $5-million in grants to 21 projects this month designed to help Americans be better informed about local news. (Read The Chronicle’s article about the program.)

David Westphal, a former newspaper journalist who writes a blog about journalism as a senior fellow for the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Journalism School, in Los Angeles, says the program rankled at least one local newspaper.

The San Antonio Area Foundation received a $488,500 to create Web videos about community stories. “Its proposal,” writes Mr. Westphal, “began this way: ‘Although ranked in the top 50 media markets in the country, San Antonio lacks in-depth news coverage about diverse communities and issues...

AmeriCorps alumni who marched in last week’s Inaugural parade are sharing memories, photos, and videos on a new blog, A Lifetime of Service.

“Walking past the presidential viewing booth mere feet from the Obamas?” writes one marcher, Emily Gilliland. “ I think I strained a muscle waving so hard. It’s not because I am confident that they can fix what ails the country, but I am excited because they see the potential in all of us to band together, like AmeriCorps, and get things done.”

About 150 members of AmeriCorps Alums, a group that unites former participants in the national-service program, participated in the Inaugural parade. See photos of that event—and other nonprofit activities surrounding the Inauguration—on the Chronicle‘s Flickr group.

Do efforts to prevent climate change need a new public face?

Bill Gates seems to think so.

In his annual letter, which was released this week, the co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation applauds the growing interest in climate change because droughts, floods, and other extreme weather conditions will primarily hurt people in impoverished countries.

“The negative effects will fall almost entirely on the poor, even though they did not cause the problem. I hope that the increased public interest in reducing climate change will also increase the political will to provide aid that will help the poor mitigate its negative effects,” he writes.

But he notes that, for the most part, poor people are not identified as the victims of climate change.

“It is interesting how often the impact of climate change is illustrated by talking about the problems the polar bears will...