In recent days, WikiLeaks has drawn plenty of attention over its leaking of secret U.S. government documents on the war in Afghanistan. Some say the move endangers U.S. troops and Afghan informants, threatening U.S. national security.

Some observers of the nonprofit world are also accusing the charity, which provides a platform by which whistleblowers, journalists, and activists can anonymously share sensitive information with the public, of not being sufficiently transparent about its finances.

Jim Barnett, a writer and volunteer for the Nieman Journalism Lab, at Harvard University, says the group publishes next to nothing about how it is run on the "About Us" section of its Web site.

"I understand the need to protect whistleblowers and other sources," he says. "But when it comes to the group's finances, can't it cut out all the James Bond stuff?" 

Nonprofit journalism outlets such ...

SKS Microfinance, an Indian company that makes small loans to poor people, went public this week -- sparking a debate about whether its obligations as a publicly traded company will take it away from its antipoverty mission.

Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and widely recognized as the father of microfinance, told the Associated Press that SKS's IPO was "pushing microfinance in the loan-sharking direction." 

"It's not mission drift," he said. "It's endangering the whole mission."

Mr. Yunus said he was "repulsed" by the message he believes the microfinance company is sending -- that it can make money from the poor.

Matthew Bishop, co-author of the book Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World, has a different view. 

Mr. Bishop describes the experience of the for-profit Mexican microfinance institution Compartamos; he says it has almost certainly been able to...

Charities are all too familiar with being scrutinized over their administrative costs, but in a twist, a foundation in Britain is being asked to reduce its overhead.

John Copps, a head researcher at the British charity-evaluation group New Philanthropy Capital, describes on his organization's blog how the Big Lottery Fund -- Britain's largest grant maker -- is being instructed by the government to reduce its administrative costs from 8 percent to 5 percent.

While it may seem that the foundation shouldn't be immune to the cost-cutting going on elsewhere, Mr. Copps says, limiting the organization's administrative costs will likely cause harm.

Faced with less money and fewer employees, the foundation would likely make fewer small grants, start fewer new grant-making programs, and spend less on research and evaluation of programs. None of those moves would be good for nonprofit groups,...

The nonprofit world is starting to digest yesterday's announcement of $50-million in federal grants by the Social Innovation Fund.

Since the program was first announced, its objective has been unclear, Nathaniel Whittemore, founder of Assetmap, writes on Change.org. Was the fund's purpose to help proven programs grow or to provide support for cutting-edge, risky experimentation?

The intermediary organizations that the program selected to award the money to nonprofit groups shows that the government chose "what works" over "innovation," writes Mr. Whittemore, who regrets the decision.

"The relative smallness of the amount of resources being deployed lends themselves well to this being the 'sandbox space' where the government could support really experimental efforts that could go nowhere, but could also have the disruptive potential that just couldn't be enacted through a government...

Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of the charity-evaluation group GiveWell, says there's an "essential question" that donors aren't asking nonprofit groups.

The question, says Mr. Karnofsky, is whether a charity actually needs more money. Will more money lead to better programs that reach more people? Or do some charities have great programs that they cannot -- or will not -- expand, even if they get more financial support?

In one blog post, he cites the example of Smile Train, the organization that provides cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgeries to poor children. Mr. Karnofsky suggests that Smile Train's core program has more money than doctors and that most of the money the group raises thus goes to programs other than its primary one.  

Mr. Karnofsky says, too, that aid groups in Haiti may not need more financial support. He examines data collected by The Chronicle and estimates that...

The YMCA’s decision, announced this month, to adopt its popular nickname, the Y, as its name elicited an earnest, if not worried, response from the YWCA, the organization sometimes called "the other Y."

In a written statement titled “The Tale of two ‘Y's,’” the YWCA pointedly explained the differences in history and mission between the two organizations, which were each separately established more than 150 years ago. The YMCA’s core focus, the statement explains, is on youth development, health, fitness, and social responsibility.

The YWCA’s central purpose, by contrast, is as a provider of social services for girls and women and as an advocate for racial justice and human rights. The YWCA typically uses the money it generates from its health and fitness programs to pay for its work in civil rights and on women’s issues.

Lorraine Cole, chief executive of the YWCA USA, says it is too...

The BP oil leak and the meltdown of the global financial system were enabled by a harmful force: corporate social responsibility.

So writes Chrystia Freeland, global editor at large for Thomson Reuters, in yesterday's Washington Post.

Ms. Freeland argues that CSR "muddies the waters," distracting companies from their core goal of maximizing profits and persuading government officials that businesses are doing the right thing and don't need much regulation. 

Others who write about philanthropy and corporate social responsibility are taking issue with her argument.

Matthew Bishop, an editor at the Economist and co-author of a book on philanthropy, says that there is no evidence that the corporate social responsibility programs of BP and Goldman Sachs -- two companies singled out by Ms. Freeland -- played a part in the oil and financial crises in which those companies have been...

When charities talk about marketing, they usually mean efforts to persuade donors to give, but that's only part of the equation, Dan Elitzer, a consultant in Washington, writes on Full Contact Philanthropy.

"Nonprofits also need marketing on the delivery side," he writes. "The intended beneficiaries of the nonprofit's products or programs (i.e., the clients) need to be made aware that they exist and convinced that they should invest the time and effort to take advantage of these offerings."

According to Mr. Elitzer, when nonprofit marketing employees are courting potential donors, they are usually communicating with people whose cultural and socio-economic backgrounds are similar to their own. He says the challenge for those marketers on the program side, especially for antipoverty groups, is that potential clients may have very different experiences than their own.

"Truly effective...

The NAACP resolution condemning racist behavior among members of the Tea Party movement is drawing lots of attention. Is the strategy a good one?

Writing on an Atlantic blog, Dave Weigel, a journalist and political commentator, calls the NAACP resolution "headline-hungry act" and says he thinks it backfired.

Slate writer John Dickerson, in a podcast, asks whether the Tea Party should be held responsible for the repugnant behavior of what might be just a handful of individuals. Writing on a Los Angeles Times blog, Michael McGough says that asking the Tea Party to denounce actions by some of its devotees "implies the extremists/bigots/bombers are a sufficiently significant component of the organization that such a gesture is necessary."

Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, however, defends the NAACP's resolution. He reviews statements and actions by Tea Party members and supporters and...

• "A nonprofit is a type of business and must act like a legitimate organization to be trusted by supporters, donors, and even the people it seeks to serve," writes Joanne Fritz, a former nonprofit manager, on her About.com blog. Ms. Fritz discusses why some charities fail to meet standards set by the Better Business Bureau.

• On Connection Cafe, Jordan Viator, communications manager at Convio, offers several insights from Convio's recently released guide on how nonprofit organizations can effectively raise money online.