Drew Wheelan, conservation coordinator at the American Birding Association, wanted to find an evocative setting for a video calling on BP to stop using a chemical known as corexit to disperse oil in the Gulf of Mexico. So he filmed it in a field across the street from BP headquarters in Houma, La. 

What he ended up with was a video that showed officers from the Terrebonne Parish sheriff's department trying to stop him from filming and pulling him over after the shoot. The officers explain that BP doesn't want anyone filming but acknowledge that Mr. Wheelan isn't breaking any laws.

As Mr. Wheelan talks to the officer who pulled him over on state highway 311, he says, "I guess that's what happens when you deal with a $97-billion company."

BP denies that it asked law-enforcement officers to prohibit filming of its property.

"It's a public roadway," Daren Beaudo, a...

At midnight tonight, the basketball star LeBron James will become one of the most sought-after athletes in history.

Mr. James, already a global superstar for the Cleveland Cavaliers, is expected to receive offers from NBA franchises in Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, New York and Los Angeles.

And much of the sports world is waiting anxiously to see where he chooses to play next season.

In the event that Mr. James's decision is motivated not just by money, fame, or the prospect of winning an NBA title, a real-estate company is appealing to his sense of charity as he attempts to choose from an array of lucrative offers.

Halstead Property, a real-estate company in New York, has put together a slick video that offers Mr. James a sweetener should he choose to sign with the New York Knicks.

"We are so taken by LeBron's philanthropic efforts and community outreach that we will donate our full...

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the social-networking site Facebook, has helped change the way people interact online. But can he change the world?

In a recent interview on the blog Inside Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg explains why he believes companies like Facebook are better equipped to tackle society's problems than nonprofit groups.

"I think building a company is the best way to change the world, because it’s the best way to align the interests of a lot of smart people and a lot of partners to build something that’s great and that serves people," Mr. Zuckerberg said in the interview. "You can’t do that if you’re an individual because it’s just you and there’s no one to align, and you can’t do it if you’re a nonprofit because you have no resources and you’re constantly out trying to raise money instead of generating it and being self-sufficient."

Another Facebook founder has been in...

• The current discussion on helping innovative nonprofit organizations grow to scale is missing an opportunity by focusing on relatively new groups to the exclusion of older charities, John Brothers, a nonprofit consultant, writes on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.

• A new competition, Design for the First World, is looking for creative solutions to social and environmental problems from the developing world that could be applied in developed countries, Allison Arieff, writes on The Design of Everyday Life, a Good magazine blog. The goal of the contest, she writes, is to draw attention to the often paternalistic attitude of people in the West trying to fix problems in the developing world.

Sometimes it makes sense for a nonprofit organization to charge some customers a higher price as a way to subsidize a service for others via discounts, Rafi Mohammed, a business consultant, writes in a post about nonprofit pricing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review's blog.

Compelling photographs are critical to a sucessful appeal, but the images should not contradict the solicitation's message, Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, writes on Future Fundraising Now.

On his blog, Transformational Giving, Eric Foley, chief executive officer of Seoul U.S.A., rewrites from a fund raiser's point of view Leo Tolstoy's short story, Three Questions. In the reworked story, Mr. Foley asks his own three questions: "What is the best time to ask for a gift? Who are the most important donors to work with? What is the most important fund-raising activity to do at all times...

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation is using the World Cup tournament as an opportunity to raise awareness about inequality in South Africa through an event-driven blog, Beyond the Games.

The foundation, in Flint, Mich., is using a team of guest bloggers from South Africa, which is hosting the event, to contribute posts about conditions in the country that coincide with the four-week tournament.

In one recent post, Ela Gandhi, a granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi and a former member of South Africa's parliament, openly questions whether the event can bring social and economic value to South Africans.

Ms. Ghandi, editor of Satyagraha, notes that some South Africans have sacrificed their livelihoods to accommodate the games and others have benefited from the tournament. She questions whether the games will create a stronger unity within the country.

"[South Africans] need to forge a broad,...

• Michael Seltzer, a contributor to Philantopic, discusses what he learned during the recent Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C. He says that countries need to make a commitment to reducing the social, economic, and health disparities that many women worldwide face today.

• A nonprofit Catholic health-care system in Boston is asking the city's archdiocese to stop its sale to a private-equity firm, after learning that a clause in the deal allows the firm to terminate the system's Catholic identity, says Gregory Corcoran, a writer for The Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog.

• Noel Beebe, interactive consultant at Convio, recently conducted a survey to find out what motivates people to participate in fund-raising events. She found that charities do best in attracting participants when they connect a donor's personal interests to the organization's mission....

• Peter Taylor, board chair of the James Irvine Foundation, discusses the lessons and challenges he has experienced in his role and offers insight on what nonprofit organizations should expect from their boards. He writes that the foundation's success will be a result of its board members efforts to engage and learn from other knowledgeable colleagues inside and outside the organization who have expertise in different areas.

• Nonprofit leaders have an amazing privilege and opportunity to help people connect to something larger than their own work, says Jocelyn Harmon, director of nonprofit services at Care2. On her blog, Ms. Harmon argues that nonprofit leaders need to spend less time on the trivialities of running their organizations and more time on becoming visionaries.

• Twitter may drive more traffic to an organzation's Web site -- more than twice as much, in the...

• Imagine a ranking of countries based on their efforts to encourage social innovation. That's the idea behind the "Social Competitiveness Index," and Matthew Bishop of The Economist magazine is asking readers of his blog, Philanthrocapitalism, to help shape the idea.

• Chevron and ExxonMobil are keeping low profiles on public television, Michael Getler writes in his ombudsman column on the PBS Web site. The two oil companies, which are not involved in the drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, have chosen to replace the spoken messages that used to acknowledge their sponsorship of popular PBS programs with logos.

• Mission creep leads to message creep, David Lawson, head of screening and analytics at DonorTrends, writes on Fundraising Action. Charities, he writes, often don't realize the vast array of sometimes contradictory messages they are communicating on their Web ...

• On the blog, Transformational Giving, Eric Foley, chief executive officer of Seoul USA, discusses why outsourcing fund-raising jobs has failed to become a growing trend among nonprofit organizations. He argues that charities see it as unethical and that the act of raising money still requires personal participation and ownership in the cause.

• Jed Emerson, a longtime advocate of a "blended" business-nonprofit approach to solving social problems, and Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, co-authors of Philanthrocapitalism, are developing a Social Competitiveness Index to rank countries "according to the effectiveness of their legal, fiscal, governance, and cultural environment" to spur social innovation.

• On Mashable, Greg Ferenstein writes about the growing market of "do-it yourself crowdsourcing Web sites that has made fund raising easier and more effective." He...