Four nonprofit groups will discuss the way they are tackling social problems at a White House event today that will include remarks by President Obama.

The president will discuss “the importance of searching outside Washington to find and expand successful community solutions, and challenge foundations and philanthropists to join in this effort,” the White House said in a statement.

While details of the event have not been officially announced, several people who were invited said they believe it will highlight the goals of the new White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

They said the event will include remarks by:

*Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, an antipoverty group that provides a comprehensive set of educational, medical, and social services in a 100-block area of Harlem....

First Lady Michelle Obama today announced the release of $851-million in economic-stimulus money to help build, renovate, or equip more than 1,500 community health centers.

Speaking at the Upper Cardozo Health Center in Washington, Ms. Obama said the money would help “thousands of centers across the country expand and serve more Americans who simply can’t afford insurance coverage anymore.”

She said more than 650 centers will use the money to buy new equipment or health-information technology systems, and nearly 400 to adopt or expand the use of electronic health records.

The grants are part of $2-billion that the economic-stimulus law allocated to community health centers. See The Chronicle‘s coverage of previous stimulus spending to expand health-care...

Last week’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco featured a lot of talk about the Obama administration’s efforts to promote community service.

The Chronicle‘s conference notebook brought news about the following:

• Michelle Obama’s opening pitch for Americans to make community service a part of their daily lives.

• Advice on how nonprofit groups can support the administration’s United We Serve campaign.

The new top charity regulator at the Internal Revenue Service has made clear she will continue the tax agency’s efforts to promote good governance by charities.

Sarah Hall Ingram, in remarks to a conference in Washington, said that the IRS has a “clear, unambiguous role to play” in governance matters.

“Some have argued that we do not need to be involved, because we can count on the states to do their job and the sector to stay on the path of self-regulation,” said Ms. Ingram.

“While both state regulation and sector self-regulation are important, and I welcome and respect them, they do not get the IRS off the hook,” she said. “Congress gave us a job to do, and we cannot delegate to others our obligation to enforce the...

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has released a report on the “misreporting” of cash contributions to charities by individuals.

In 2001, an estimated 46 percent of taxpayers who deducted cash contributions misreported their deductions, the agency said. “About 79 percent of misreporting taxpayers overstated a total of $16-billion in contributions while about 21 percent of misreporting taxpayers understated a total of $2.2-billion in contributions,” said the report.

In 2008, the IRS examined about 175,000 taxpayers “who potentially misreported cash contributions, out of about 1.4 million individual taxpayers it examined that fiscal year, and adjusted cash-contribution amounts by $593-million in net terms,” the agency said.

Gerald Walpin, who was fired from his post as inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, said he acted properly and questions the timing of the decision.

“I and my office acted throughout with the highest integrity in reports and dealing with the corporation and its management in performing the IG’s responsibility to be an independent overseer of the corporation’s activities,” he said in an interview. He said he told the White House it might not appear coincidental that the president’s decision to remove him followed two reports he issued that criticized the national-service agency.

But the White House said the decision was made solely because of Mr. Walpin’s conduct, citing a decision by an acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento to file a complaint against him.

“We are aware of the...

President Obama plans to remove Gerald Walpin, the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, from his post, the corporation announced today in a statement.

Mr. Walpin recently issued a report critical of an AmeriCorps program that provides money to the Teaching Fellows project at City University of New York that was contested by the corporation, according to an article in the publication Youth Today.

But an official at the corporation, which operates AmeriCorps and other national-service programs, said the decision to fire him was not connected to that report and was made before the document was issued on June 4.

“The president has lost confidence in the inspector general and wants to appoint...

A committee of nonprofit experts that advises the Internal Revenue Service is recommending that the agency improve the tax rules governing international grant making.

“While the longstanding framework for cross-border philanthropy functions well, it can and should be updated to simplify compliance and clarify areas of uncertainty,” said a report by the Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities.

“Much of the guidance affecting cross-border philanthropy was provided long ago and fails to reflect developments of the past 15 or more years,” the report said. “As such, it does not address certain practices and structures that are common today.”

The report said that the committee believed that “a modest expenditure of IRS and Treasury...

An inspector general has found that the federal government should stop an AmeriCorps program that provides money for the Teaching Fellows project at City University of New York because it does not meet the essential AmeriCorps criterion of filling an “unmet” need, the publication Youth Today reported.

Gerald Walpin, inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service, said in an audit that the federal government should recover the money it has spent on the program, which the university estimates could be as much as $75-million. He said the AmeriCorps money duplicated other programs and played no role in attracting people to the fellows project.

The corporation disputed the findings and said it would not halt the program.

Overwhelmed by the growing humanitarian emergency in Pakistan, aid organizations are calling on Congress to allocate more money for the nearly 3 million people who’ve fled a military offensive against the Taliban.

In a letter to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Samuel A. Worthington, president of the umbrella organization InterAction, said aid workers are stretched thin trying to assist people who are arriving at a rate of nearly 126,000 per day. Money and supplies have been slow to arrive in the region, he said.

Mr. Worthington urged the government to spend an additional $150-million through the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and approve a Senate provision providing $345-million to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

In addition, he...