Philanthropy experts are debating the nature of charitable dollars — are they public or private funds?

The discussion is not new, but has become more important lately as it is key to the question of how the government should regulate foundations and whether it should force them to give more to the poor and other disadvantaged populations.

The Philanthropy Roundtable, a Washington association of grant makers, released this month a new report that attacks the idea that philanthropy is public money because donors receive a tax deduction and grant makers are tax-exempt.

“The ‘public-money’ claim is not well founded in legal authority,” says the report, How Public is Private Philanthropy: Separating Myth from Reality. The report, which was the subject of a recent discussion at the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, goes on to say about the tax benefits, “There is no ...

Join the Chronicle on Wednesday at 10 p.m. Eastern time for a real-time discussion about the latest episode of the new NBC show The Philanthropist.

For those who missed it, you can also catch a replay of our discussion of the premiere episode.

Discussing Episode Two of ‘The Philanthropist’

Do charities that benefited from Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme have a legal or moral responsibility to give back the money?

Steven M. Davidoff, a law professor at the University of Connecticut, asks that question on The New York Times DealBook blog. To illustrate the conundrum, he describes a lawsuit filed by the trustee of Mr. Madoff’s estate, Irving H. Picard, against Jeffry M. Picower and other affiliated entities, including the Picower Foundation.

The complaint alleges that the Picower Foundation received roughly $5-billion in profits from investing with Mr. Madoff over two decades. It also says the foundation’s representatives knew, or should have known, that Mr. Madoff was engaged in a fraud, given the incredibly high rate of returns. (See The Chronicle article on the lawsuit).

The foundation gave away more than $20-million a year — money that never really existed...

“Paraskilling,” the practice of breaking down skilled services such as education and health care into simplified tasks that can easily be completed by unskilled workers, may help charities and government organizations bring those services to needy people in developing countries, writes Adrienne Villani at the online publication Beyond Profit. But Ms. Villani wonders if something is lost when jobs like teaching are broken up in this fashion.

To Ms. Villani, who encountered paraskilling via a new report on serving emerging markets by the Monitor, consulting group, “I thought it a savior, that which we had all been waiting for. It could easily be applicable to health care, education, financial services.”

The Monitor report, she writes, spotlights the example of Gyan Shala, a charity in Ahmedabad, India, that provides elementary education to poor children. Its one-room schools...

The New York Foundation for the Arts is offering some help to recession-plagued arts groups in the city: a chance to claim some discounted office space, according to Dana Variano on the PhilanthroMedia blog.

Citing a report in the Philanthropy News Digest, Ms. Variano says the foundation is now soliciting proposals from groups and artists affiliated with it.

Those artists and charities selected for the program will be eligible for discounted rent – -$200 per month — on work space in the foundation’s office, which will include Internet access, discounted scanning and printing services, meeting rooms, and other amenities.

Ms. Variano praises the program and suggests it might be a model for helping arts groups and artists — and even small for-profit entities — in other cities weather the recession. “Have an extra office or building area in your workplace?” she writes. “Why not try...

Recent recommendations on good grant making by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy have divided foundation leaders, but there are key points the nonprofit world seems to agree on — and can do something about, says the Alliance for Justice.

On the Washington group’s blog, Sue Hoechstetter, the organization’s senior adviser for foundation advocacy, says both supporters and critics of the committee would seem to agree on its recommendations that foundations increase advocacy work and provide more operating support for charities.

And where there is common ground, she hopes that philanthropic leaders will work together to make changes.

For example, she suggests, “With much of the nonprofit sector experiencing economic crises, and general support funding on the decrease, the Philanthropy Roundtable and Council on Foundations could together develop a strategic campaign ...

As people mourn the death of the pop star Michael Jackson, fans, the news media, and others are discussing his charitable work, which some say paved the way for the current surge in celebrity philanthropy.

The entertainer supported dozens of charities during his life, including USA for Africa, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. He reportedly was listed in the 2000 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Charities Supported by a Pop Star.” The number was 39.

As a humanitarian, he is perhaps best know for “We Are the World,” the 1985 song he wrote with Lionel Richie that raised millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa. To honor the King of Pop’s philanthropy, some fans and small companies have pledged to make donations to his favorite charities.

Yet as with the rest of his life, Mr. Jackson occasionally triggered...

The Sierra Club is trying to build a user-generated online database of the nation’s trails. And what better way to publicize the database than by enlisting the name of a man whose face landed on the front page of just about every national newspaper this morning?

“We heard the governor of South Carolina had some trouble finding the Appalachian trail last week,” the Sierra Club’s deputy executive director writes in an e-mail to supporters today. “We don’t want that to happen to anyone else, so now’s a perfect time to let you know about our new online community: Sierra Club Trails.”

“So far,” writes Greg Haegele in the e-mail, “only two sections of the Appalachian Trail have been added by our wonders. No wonder the governor got lost!”

Mr. Haegele then asks readers to join the Sierra Club Trails community and share their photographs and information about the Appalachian trail and...

The debut of NBC’s The Philanthropist drew more viewers last night than did other network offerings in the same time slot, but the drama’s premiere was still considered merely fair.

Approximately 7.41 million people tuned in to see the show’s pilot, according to tvbythenumbers.com. A repeat of CSI: NY, also at 10 pm, attracted 7.39 viewers, and President Obama’s town-hall meeting on health care drew 4.7 million.

But the show about a billionaire businessman who catches the philanthropy bug lost about 17 percent of its audience during the hour, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The number of millionaires worldwide shrank by 15 percent in 2008, an ominous sign for philanthropy.

The survey by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch found that the recession cut the number of millionaires to 8.6 million, according to Bloomberg news service. Their assets dropped 20 percent, to $32.8-trillion, after a 9.4 percent increase the previous year, according to the companies’ 13th annual World Wealth Report.

Rich people around the globe took a beating. However, the wealth of millionaires in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to surpass that of North American millionaires by 2013, the survey found.

The very rich — those with at least $30-million in assets — were hit even harder by the financial crisis. Their wealth declined by 25 percent, the study said.

The United States still has the largest number of millionaires, followed by Japan, Germany, China, and the United Kingdom...