Two big foundations have teamed up to assist civil-rights groups and legal-aid organizations that have lost donors due to the alleged financial scheme of Bernard Madoff.

The Atlantic Philanthropies and Open Society Institute have pledged to match as much as $300,000 in donations to the Brennen Center for Justice, Human Rights Watch, the Advancement Project, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The foundations’ offer was good until yesterday.

MoveOn.Org, the liberal activist group, is organizing the fund-raising effort. It sent an e-mail message to its 5 million members yesterday asking them to contribute.

“If these groups can’t replace the funding that came from investment accounts that Madoff stole, they may be forced to start cutting important projects or, in some cases, even lay off staff,” it says.

In a related topic, the founder of another effort to raise funds for...

A new report’s criticism of how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation fights diseases is being debated.

Global Health Watch 2, a report published by four international health advocacy groups, questions Bill Gates and his foundation’s efforts on several levels. The charges include that the foundation for many years ignored the importance of improving the basic health infrastructure of developing countries; it invests in unethical corporations; and that philanthropy puts too much power in the wealthy to improve the lives of the global poor.

But the authors of Philanthrocapitalism defend the Microsoft tycoon and his charitable work.

On their Values blog, Michael Green and Matthew Bishop write that the report is off-base with its concerns.

For example, the report complains that the Gates foundation “is not accountable to developing governments or the World Health Organization,” ...

Donors who are new to philanthropy often have well-intentioned but ill-informed ideas about giving. To help them make the most of their generosity, the blog Philanthromedia is this week posting a list of 10 tips from Paul Shoemaker, executive director of Social Ventures Partners, in Seattle.

Mr. Shoemaker takes aim at such common donor situations as a request that a gift be earmarked only for programs but not “overhead.” He challenges donors who hold this view, noting that it often excludes the support of staff members who run charitable programs: “Nonprofit organizations are businesses just like any for-profit entity, but with a social mission. They have to invest not only in the ‘product,’ but also in the systems, infrastructure, and operations to support the end product. “

He also urges donors not to give their money to a charity simply because of its financial neediness, because...

Should donors help the nonprofit victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme?

A new Web site, titled They Need Us Now, has been set up to raise money for charities that have been hurt financially because donors who supported them lost major investments with Mr. Madoff.

Lucy Bernholz, a philanthropy consultant, praises the effort, though she cautions that it’s unclear who is operating it.

“It is a great idea, I hope it is legit. It was also put together fast – the Madoff scandal only came to light 10 days ago,” she writes on her blog, Philanthropy 2173.

About three dozen large Jewish foundations have also joined together to aid Mr. Madoff’s victims, many whom were Jewish nonprofit groups, reports The Washington Post.

But Bob McInnis, executive director of an anti-hunger group in Calgary, Canada, questions whether the nonprofit world should be rushing to aid the nonprofit ...

KyNam Doan wants a job.

And he’s taking some unique steps to find one.

Mr. Doan, a San Francisco native and 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, has launched a blog that will chronicle his efforts to find a job in marketing at a nonprofit group in the Bay Area.

But he’s not stopping there.

Mr. Doan has pledged to donate five hours as a volunteer to any nonprofit group that offers him a job interview. He’s also planning to volunteer an additional hour per job interview at the San Francisco Food Bank and is donating a minute of his time for every unique visitor who comes to his Web site.

The effort is already paying off for Mr. Doan — and for San Francisco nonprofit groups.

His blog says that he has already received four job interviews, which means that he will donate 20 volunteer hours to those groups and another four hours to the San Francisco Food Bank.

Mr...

The financial fraud allegedly perpetrated by the philanthropist and financier Bernard Madoff exposes an uncomfortable double-standard in the nonprofit world, writes Tom Belford, a fund-raising consultant.

While in recent years charities have faced increased scrutiny, in the case of Mr. Madoff, it was a donor — and how he invested the money of other donors — that should have been examined, he writes on his blog, The Agitator.

“Who’s supposed to be protecting the charities from the unscrupulous donors?!” Mr. Belford writes.

And while the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to investigate Mr. Madoff, “let one nonprofit emit an errant fart and grandstanding members of Congress and the IRS would be all over it (the nonprofit, that is) like ticks on a hound,” he says.

Read The Chronicle’s article about how Mr. Madoff’s alleged scam is threatening nonprofit groups. Read other ...

As foundations and philanthropists struggle to figure how to best respond to the economic crisis, one philanthropy adviser says, “keep your powder dry.”

Richard Marker, a donor consultant in New York, says donors can play an immediate role, but should also consider taking a slow approach to the financial meltdown.

“We have learned from the experience with ‘disaster funding’ that there is merit in not being the first funding responders. Many unanticipated needs arise, or needs which are more fine tuned, 6 months, 1 year, even 2 years after,” he writes on his blog, Wise Philanthropy. “After all, no funder alone can solve this financial and societal mess so one needn’t feel guilty if one waits.”

He suggests that donors continue to support innovative ideas; consider assisting arts and cultural institutions and other non-social services; examine your missions during the crisis, but do...

The American Red Cross in Washington had, until recently, prevented its employees from using social-networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace during work hours.

But a funny thing happened when the charity changed its policy earlier this year.

Instead of witnessing a loss in employee productivity, the Red Cross actually found that it was able to find new and creative ways to raise money, writes Beth Kanter on Beth’s Blog.

In fact, the Red Cross was able to win a $50,000 grant from the Western Union Foundation through a campaign on the popular networking site Facebook.

“Since the great wall fell, we’ve been able to promote initiatives like the Western Union Foundation contest to all of our chapters and blood regions,” Red Cross social-media specialist Wendy Harman said in an interview with Ms. Kanter. “When 700+ entities across the country are all asking their supporters to...

Several Jewish nonprofit groups have lost millions of dollars, and one has shut down, because they fell victim to the investment scheme allegedly put together by the financier Bernard L. Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq.

Charity experts say that his fraud will reverberate across the nonprofit world and serves as a reminder to charities that they need to keep a close watch on their investments and the people who are controlling them.

Mr. Madoff was arrested last week for operating a hedge fund that essentially worked as a $50-billion Ponzi scheme. His nonprofit victims include the Robert I. Lappin Foundation, in Salem, Mass., which announced on its Web site that its has been forced to close due to the incident.

“The money needed to fund the programs of the Lappin Foundations is gone. The foundation staff has been terminated today,” says the note from the group, which used...

How should people who are bombarded with requests during the holiday season decide which charities to support?

Nathaniel Whittemore, director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, is inviting philanthropy and social-entrepreneurship bloggers to offer some guidance.

“Every organization and their mother has some sort of matching offer or competition they’re promoting, and it seems like every one of them knows how to get to you,” he writes on the Change.org blog. “Even for the involved giver, it makes it hard to figure out what to spend your limited resources on.”

He is asking bloggers to offer “The One Thing You Need to Know Before You Donate This Holiday Season” — and linking to their responses.

Among the answers so far: See if a current or former beneficiary is on the group’s board of directors, ask what percentage of the group’s board members donated...