The Department of Education officially started the Promise Neighborhoods program today, inviting applications for $10-million in grants to plan comprehensive antipoverty projects in urban neighborhoods, rural areas, or tribal communities.

The department said it would award up to 20 one-year grants of between $400,000 and $500,000 for projects modeled after Harlem Children's Zone, a charity program that offers educational and social services to help poor children from birth to college in a nearly 100-block area in New York.

The application deadline is June 25, and grants will be awarded by September.

The department said applicants must:

• Operate a school or work with at least one school.
• Be a single entity, either a nonprofit group or higher-education institute, that is representative of the  geographic area that will be served.
• Obtain matching funds of at least 25 percent or 5...

As part of a broader probe into corporate payments to health charities and other medical groups, Sen. Charles Grassley has asked the National Alliance on Mental Illness to report what it is doing to encourage its state chapters to disclose donations from pharmaceutical companies.

"NAMI chapters are surely accepting funds from pharmaceutical companies, and some of them have accepted substantial sums over the period of our inquiry," Senator Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter sent to the group this week.

The letter includes a chart highlighting the 10 NAMI chapters it said received the most drug-company contributions from January 2005 to October 2009. The California chapter topped the list ($632,000), followed by Ohio ($623,000), and New York ($448,000), according to the letter. Senator Grassley requested information from the chapters last...

The Corporation for National and Community Service has received 69 applications for the $50-million in grants that the Social Innovation Fund will award this year.

The grant proposals come from collaborations of more than 260 foundations, charities, universities, local governments, businesses, and private donors. The applicants are seeking the money as "intermediary" grant makers, which will, in turn, provide grants to nonprofit groups that have shown results in their work.

The corporation said that the applications hail from 25 states and the District of Columbia and are "well balanced" across the fund's three issue areas: economic opportunity, youth development and school support, and healthy futures.

Over the coming weeks, more than 50 experts from the philanthropic, nonprofit, and government realms will review the applications. Seven to 10 awards of $1-million to $10-million are...

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the Obama administration to investigate recent Congressional earmarks that the civil-liberties watchdog group says have been made to nine religious schools and organizations.

The earmarks, which are in the current federal budget, raise constitutional issues about inappropriate public financing of religion, Americans United said in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and three other cabinet members.

"We ask that you carefully investigate these earmarks and that you impose any restrictions necessary to ensure that the earmarks satisfy all legal requirements," wrote Americans United. "If such restrictions cannot feasibly be put in place for one or more of the earmarks, then, in order to comply with the law, please refrain from funding those earmarks."

The Obama administration did not have immediate comment. Americans...

The Internal Revenue Service is not backing away from its controversial efforts to promote good governance by charities, according to its top nonprofit regulator.

The federal tax code does not explicitly set out governance standards for the IRS to enforce, but the tax agency in the past two years has been keeping an eye on charities' governance practices -- a move that has drawn criticism from some observers.

Sarah Hall Ingram, in remarks to a conference in Washington on Wednesday, noted that some people believe the IRS "should just be sticking to the [tax] code and the exact words of the code and get out of the governance business."

Instead, she said, "we are in this discussion to stay."

Not 'Off the Hook'

Even with state oversight of nonprofit groups and self-regulation by charities, Ms. Ingram said, "Congress is not going to let the IRS off the hook for its job of regulating the ...

As Congress eventually moves to consider making broad changes to the nation's tax structure, proposals could emerge that would take into account a "blurring of the lines" in recent years between nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies, according to Russell Sullivan, staff director for the Senate Finance Committee.

"We might see the emergence of some proposals to establish what I'll call, for the lack of a better term, a for-benefit corporation -- something that is in between a private taxable company that's under our rules of C corporations or S corporations and partnerships but also not under our rules having to do with charities," he said.

As an example, Mr. Sullivan pointed to the recent enactment of the new federal health-care law. "As you know, a lot of changes are coming in health care. One of them is we authorized these state-based cooperatives to sell insurance in...

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, last year donated 6 percent of their income of $5.5-million to charity, according to figures released today by the White House.

Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill, donated 1.5 percent of their income of $333,182 to charity, in both cash and donated goods.

The Obamas reported giving a total of $329,100 to 40 charitable organizations. Their largest gifts were $50,000 contributions to CARE and to the United Negro College Fund.

As the White House had announced in March, Mr. Obama donated his $1.4-million Nobel Peace Prize award to 10 charities.

In its statement today, the White House said the federal tax code provides "that if the recipient of the Nobel Prize directs the Nobel Committee to donate the prize money directly to charity, as the president did, the recipient does not have to recognize the prize as income on his federal income tax...

Maryland has created a new legal structure—called a benefit corporation for companies that blend business with social and environmental good.

The legislation, signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley, requires that benefit corporations create a positive impact on society and that boards of directors consider how decisions will affect employees, local jurisdictions, and the environment, rather than just looking at shareholders' interests. It also offers board members legal protection for taking social and environmental issues into consideration.

"For the first time, we have a market-based solution supporting investors and entrepreneurs who want to make money and make a difference," Andrew Kassoy said in a written statement. Mr. Kassoy is co-founder of B Lab, a nonprofit organization in Berwyn, Pa., that runs a certification program for socially responsible businesses.

The new law...

In announcing the new director of the Social Innovation Fund, Paul L. Carttar, the Corporation for National and Community Service said that more than 200 groups had indicated they planned to apply for the $50-million in grants that the fund will award this year.

But officials declined to say who, or specifically what kind of groups, had sent the letters.

One applicant, however, has fessed up: New Profit, a charity in Cambridge, Mass., that specializes in providing money to promising nonprofit groups, kind of like the Social Innovation Fund itself. New Profit also happens to be Mr. Carttar's former employer (though he will recuse himself from any discussions of the organization during the grant-awards process).

Kim Syman, a managing partner at New Profit, says the group is applying for a social-innovation grant in the area of youth development. Like other applicants, New Profit is...

It seems the Internal Revenue Service is putting the "hot" in hotline.

A telephone number on the agency's Web site meant to provide information about tax-exempt organizations actually connects callers to a phone-sex operator.

On a Web page titled "Six Important Facts About Tax-Exempt Organizations," No. 3 suggests Americans call an IRS number to confirm if a group is qualified to receive a tax-deductible donation.

But unless promises of "hot action" and heavy breathing are new tax-code jargon for 501(c)(3), donors are going to be rather confused.

According to the IRS, the number is one digit off, and the correct phone line is 877-829-5500.

As of 1 pm Friday, the number had yet to be corrected.