The city of New York announced today it was starting five projects to strengthen local arts and cultural groups, offering grants, training, and free exhibit and performance space.

The projects — part of the city’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan — were announced by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Seth W. Pinsky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation; and Kate D. Levin, cultural affairs commissioner.

“Our cultural institutions and artists contribute to a creative spirit unmatched anywhere else, and we recognize how important it is to do everything we can to make sure they continue to flourish,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement.

The five projects are:

• Curate New York City, which will provide free exhibit space to visual artists at city-owned properties.

• New York City Performs, which will offer free outdoor space for public performances.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the sixth in a series of filing tips to help nonprofit organizations prepare their Form 990 federal informational tax return, the primary document that groups file each year.

The latest batch of advice explains why only certain types of attachments to the Form 990 are permitted.

When the IRS redesigned the Form 990 for the 2008 tax year, it created a “core form” to be filed by all organizations and a series of schedules that some groups must also submit on such topics as executive compensation and noncash contributions.

The IRS included a Schedule O for reporting any information that does not fit on the core form or the other schedules.

“The form was redesigned, in part, to promote uniform reporting and to provide a structured format for attaching information to the form,” the IRS said in its new tips.

Thus, nonprofit organizations are...

The mainstream news media repeatedly echoed unverified allegations and distortions when covering charges by conservative commentators of voter fraud against Acorn, the community-organizing group, during the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new study by university scholars.

The study, which analyzed 647 stories in 15 major news outlets and additional stories in three local newspapers, found that “the news media agenda is easily permeated by persistent conservative media campaigns, even when there is little or no truth to the story.”

The analysis was conducted by Peter Dreier, director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Center at Occidental College, in Los Angeles, and Christopher Martin, professor of journalism at the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls.

Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is now under fire because employees were...

The White House announced today that it had issued guidelines instructing administration officials to ensure that their dealings with the public do not appear to be influenced by improper political considerations.

“Strict adherence to the rules is not enough,” says a memorandum to White House staff members and federal agency and department heads. “We need to avoid even the appearance of politicization in order to ensure people’s faith in the actions of the administration.”

The move follows controversy over a conference call organized in August by a National Endowment for the Arts official to promote the administration’s “United We Serve” volunteer program. Some artists said the official made comments that appeared to be pushing the White House’s political agenda.

White House officials have said the call did not violate any laws and was organized with good intentions but that it...

Government policies need to do more to recognize the valuable role that nonprofit groups play in helping regions recover from disasters like Hurricane Katrina, concludes a new study by the Rand Corporation, a think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.

Groups like the United Way and American Red Cross have proven they can be important assets after a disaster, “but their roles are poorly defined and frequently not suppofted by state and federal guidelines,” Anita Chandra, lead author of the study, said in a press release.

She said such groups are particularly good at “human recovery,” or helping people rebuild their social routines and support networks following a disaster — an effort that can take years.

The study, based on a meeting in April in New Orleans between the Rand Corporation’s Gulf States Policy Institute and local nonprofit leaders, found that “human recovery” is not well...

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Thursday the start of a multi-year advertising and marketing campaign aimed at showing the public and politicians success stories from the U.S. government’s spending on global health.

Cynthia Lewis, a senior program officer for the Seattle foundation, says the Gateses want to resolve what they believe is a disconnect between the public’s perception of federal spending and a much more optimistic reality.

“The more you talk to Americans, the more you understand that they don’t know where their money has gone, let alone that any of it has resulted in successful outcomes and that there’s been real progress in saving lives and empowering lives,” Ms. Lewis says.

The Living Proof Project, as the effort is being called, includes:

• A Web site with videos, photos, interactive graphics, and personal profiles of people who have benefitted from...

The Internal Revenue Service has released proposed regulations that would require a special type of nonprofit group to distribute at least 5 percent of its assets each year for charitable purposes.

At issue: so-called supporting organizations — charities that carry out their mission by supporting specific other groups, including hospitals and colleges.

The rules, issued by the IRS and the Treasury Department, were required by provisions of the federal Pension Protection Act of 2006, which Congress passed in an effort to crack down on abuses.

The IRS proposal focuses on so-called Type III supporting organizations, which are groups that “are operated in connection with” their supported organizations.

Organizations are classified as Type III based on two standards, one of which is called an “integral part” test.

One way a supporting organization can meet the integral part...

Several Senate Finance Committee members have proposed that nonprofit groups be eligible for tax credits designed to help small businesses offer health insurance to their employees in legislation to overhaul the health-care system.

A bill unveiled last week by the committee’s chairman, Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, offers federal tax credits to small businesses, but it would benefit only employers that pay income tax — a category that excludes most nonprofit groups.

As one of several hundred amendments that senators have offered to Senator Baucus’s text, Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell, of Washington; John Kerry, of Massachusetts; Blanche Lincoln, of Arkansas; and Charles Schumer, of New York, along with Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, of Maine, proposed that “nonprofit entities that meet the eligibility requirements of the small business credit would be eligible to receive the...

A health-care proposal announced by Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, would require nonprofit hospitals “to conduct a community health needs assessment at least once every three years and adopt an implementation strategy to meet the community needs.”

The senator’s bill, known as the “chairman’s mark,” will be reviewed by the finance committee next week.

The Baucus proposal also would require hospitals “to adopt, implement, and widely publicize a written financial assistance policy” and to “bill patients who qualify for financial assistance no more than the amount generally billed to insured patients.”

Mr. Baucus’s plan would require the Internal Revenue Service to review information about a hospital’s community-benefit activities, currently reported on the Form 990 informational tax return, at least once every three years. “Such review ...

Alan Khazei, a major figure in the national-service movement, has announced he is taking a leave of absence from his job as head of Be the Change, a nonprofit group in Boston, to pursue a bid for the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat.

“Because like all of you, I have dedicated myself to empowering people from all backgrounds to make a difference and strengthen our democracy, today a group of citizens is picking up petitions and helping me take the necessary steps to participate in the special election in Massachusetts,” Mr. Khazei wrote in a letter to colleagues.

He called Senator Kennedy “our nation’s leading champion for citizen service” and “an outstanding mentor, friend, and champion.”

Massachusetts will hold a special general election for the seat in January, with a Democratic primary in December. The Boston Globe reported last week that Mr. Khazei was...