• While 42 percent of foundations in the northwest plan to decrease their giving in 2009 by 10 percent or more, grant makers in the region are trying to be more creative in how they help poor people and assist grant recipients, writes Carol Lewis, chief executive of Philanthropy Northwest, a Seattle coalition of foundations and corporations in six Northwest states, on her group’s Web site.

• Holden Karnofsky questions the value of supporting scholarships for students in developing countries on the blog of GiveWell, a charity he started to identify the best nonprofit groups.

• ProPublica and other nonprofit online newspapers are quickly learning how to raise money effectively, acknowledging that generating philanthropic interest is key to their future success, writes Alan D. Mutter on his blog. Mr. Mutter, a former newspaper editor, is a media consultant and teaches at the...

Should people support higher-education institutions like Harvard University with billion-dollar endowments?

Randy Cohen, author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, says donors should split their giving.

Given the wealth disparity between Harvard and other colleges, particularly ones that primarily serve poor and minority students, Mr. Cohen recommends that Americans who are inclined to make a contribution to Harvard should give half of their donation to it and the rest to less well-off institutions.

“We’ll experiment with the proportions to find the sweet spot that aids the most students while discouraging the fewest donors,” he writes. “This reform need not be written into law. It should be accepted voluntarily by every donor and embraced by every university with a substantial endowment and a concern for an egalitarian society.”

Several readers disagreed...

• Gordon Campbell, president of the United Way of NYC, writes on the Huffington Post about his concern that charities are “losing momentum for significant change” during the recession. Groups ought to be streamlining their operations, more creatively engaging with donors and volunteers, and holding themselves more accountable, he writes.

• A stringent vetting process for new officials is denying the federal government talented people from the nonprofit world, says John Podesta, chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, in a video interview on The Economist’s Web site.

• Sean Stannard-Stockton, an adviser to wealthy donors and a Chronicle columnist, says that requiring foundations to give out more than 5 percent of their assets each year — the figure they must contribute now — probably isn’t the solution to the nonprofit world’s...

A debate has erupted over whether the almost $1-million compensation for the chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is justified.

A new Chronicle survey shows that Jeffrey S. Raikes, who joined the Seattle fund last year, is earning a $990,000 annual salary, the largest compensation for the 49 foundation leaders included in the study.

The authors of Philanthrocapitalism, Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, argue on their blog that Mr. Raikes’s pay may cause some “huffing and puffing” but that it is well deserved. The nonprofit world should be able to reward talented leaders, they argue.

“The tendency to judge nonprofit management by the scratchiness of their hair shirts (on the basis that paying decent salaries is a ‘waste’ of precious charitable donations that should be going to the beneficiaries) is widespread,” they write. “Yet this is a dangerous canard.”...

• With more than one charity for every 300 Americans, the nonprofit world should consider ways to operate more like Internet companies such as eBay, share back-office expenses, and use other ideas to reshape how they deliver services, argues Paul Lamb, a nonprofit consultant, in an opinion article in The Christian Science Monitor.

• Last week’s Clinton Global Initiative emphasized charitable ideas that can offer investment banks a “route out of their reputational hell,” like supporting the development of women and girls in poor nations, writes Stephen Foley, a columnist for The Independent, a British newspaper.

• Lucy Bernholz, a consultant to foundations, recently asked readers of her blog to submit their answers to the question, “What trend, change, entity, or idea will matter most to the social sector in 2010?” Among the responses: the shuttering of some nonprofit groups a...

• The Clinton Global Initiative, the former president’s annual gathering on philanthropy, hasn’t exactly jumped the shark, writes Mitch Nauffts, of the Foundation Center. But the mood at this fall’s meeting is less breathless than in year’s past, says Mr. Nauffts his PhilanTopic blog.

• Matthew Bishop, an editor with The Economist and the author of a book about philanthropy, writes on his blog that the Grameen Bank’s founder, Muhammad Yunus, has takend “too narrow” a vision of a “social business” by saying it should be nonprofit rather than for-profit.

• The Washington Post’s On Faith blog is encouraging a debate on whether religious charities that receive government money should be allowed to discriminate in their hiring. Susan Jacoby, an author, says requiring religious institutions to hire people who do not agree with their principles is “absurd,” but argues that that is why the government should “not be in the business of funneling money for social-services through any faith-based organization, whatever its hiring practices.”

• John Copps of the philanthropic advisory group New Philanthropy Capital writes about how the recession is forcing grant makers in England to rethink the way they give. Grant makers have traditionally paid for the start-up costs of promising projects, and then looked to government to pick up the tab as the organizations grow. But Mr. Copps suggests that with governments cutting their budgets, donors...

• Hildy Gottlieb, president of the nonprofit Community-Driven Institute, says on her blog Creating the Future that the notion of “best practices” has contributed to “weaker, less confident” nonprofit leaders, board micromanagement, and other ills.

• Writing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s blog, Lloyd Nimetz, founder of a group that connects donors with Argentine organizations, discusses what social entrepreneurs can learn from activists, and vice versa.

• On Donor Power Blog, Jeff Brooks, a direct-marketing consultant, offers some reasons why nonprofit groups should continue effective direct-mail campaigns, even though many experts say direct mail is dead.

• Jacob Berkman, a writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Fundermentalist blog, highlights a few ways that Jewish charities are using the Yom Kippur holiday to raise money and attention. American Jewish...

• Replace your annual report with a postcard and conduct a study of how people are talking about your charity online. Those are just two of the recommendations from Gail Hyman, a marketing and communications consultant, in a blog post about charity marketing on the eJewish Philanthropy Web site.

• In his Piece of Mind blog, Robert Egger, the president of D.C. Central Kitchen, weighs in on the Supreme Court’s decision last week that struck down some restrictions on electioneering by nonprofit organizations.

• The Boston Foundation’s decision to offer more unrestricted grants is a “brave act of leadership” that other donors should follow, says Dan Pallotta, a former fund raiser, on a blog of the Harvard Business School.

• With the start of the Jewish new year last week, many Jewish nonprofit leaders are trying to forget the past 12 months, when Jewish charities and foundations were rocked by scandal and financial woes, writes Jacob Berkman, a blog writer for the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

• Nathaniel Whittemore, founding director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, discusses the bid by City Year’s co-founder, Alan Khazei, to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat.

• What are the nonprofit world’s biggest problems? Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle, a marketing agency, and author of the Donor Power Blog, says the top two are a distaste ...