Alan Khazei, the veteran national-service advocate who is running a long-shot campaign for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, won a major coup on Sunday — endorsement by The Boston Globe for the Democratic nomination.

The Globe praised Mr. Khazei’s efforts to build grass-roots networks to push for change, saying “this entrepreneurial model of progressive politics offers hope for real improvements.”

Mr. Khazei faces three opponents in the Democratic primary on December 8, with Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, leading in the polls. Mr. Khazei, the co-founder of City Year, the youth national-service corps, has been trailing his competitors, but the newspaper’s endorsement could give his campaign a boost.

“At the moment, [Mr. Khazei] is more of an impassioned amateur than a seasoned pro,” the Globe writes. “But his energy, idealism, and...

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have proposed a bill that would simplify the tax code for foundations, a move they say would encourage grant makers to give more during the economic downturn.

The bill, HR 4090 — which is similar to Senate legislation, S 676, proposed in March — would change the way foundations pay excise tax on their net investment income.

Foundations currently are subject to a 2 percent or 1 percent tax. They can qualify for the lower rate in any year in which the percentage of assets they directed toward charitable distributions is larger than the average percentage of their distributions during the previous five years.

While the two-tier tax was intended as an incentive for foundations to give more, lawmakers and foundation officials argue it has the opposite effect. They say it pushes foundations not to dramatically raise their grant making in any...

The Carter Center, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and other top international charities are supporting a challenge to the constitutionality of a controversial “material support” law designed to cut down on the flow of money and aid to terrorist groups.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a “friend of the court” brief today in a case before the Supreme Court in behalf of the nine charities, which say the law is overly vague and could restrict even speech and advocacy done with the goal of combating terrorism. The law makes it a crime to provide “material support or resources” to any group that the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a one-hour oral argument in the case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, this winter. A decision is expected by June, according to the Charity and Security Network....

Charity and foundation leaders Thursday urged Congress to take action to help the nonprofit organizations that are on the front lines of the mounting demand for food aid as the economic recession cuts a wide swath.

“The number of new users coupled with the growing need of existing clients has made it increasingly difficult for food banks to adequately serve the needs of those who need it most,” Scott Wolf, a founding member of the Feeding America Entertainment Council, told two House Ways and Means subcommittees that held a hearing on the issue.

The witnesses — who also included representatives of Catholic Charities USA; Northwest Harvest, in Seattle; United Way Worldwide; and the J. Bulow Campbell Foundation, in Atlanta — said the demand was rising at a time when donations were static or falling. They offered a variety of proposals for easing the strain in their written testimony, ...

Congress should provide close to $1.5-billion in extra spending on national-service programs over the next two years to provide jobs for young people who have been hit hard by the economic crisis, a new report by the Center for American Progress argues.

The effort could help both young people who are experiencing the country’s highest unemployment rates in years and nonprofit groups that could use youth workers to help meet the rising demand for antipoverty services, it says.

The center, a liberal think tank in Washington, proposes increasing the federal funds for AmeriCorps, Vista, Youth Corps, and Youth Build in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 in a way that would create the equivalent of more than 100,000 new jobs.

It suggests, for example, speeding up plans to expand AmeriCorps, which is now slated to more than triple its size, to 250,000 positions, by 2017 under the Edward M....

Editor's Note: This story is part of an ongoing series.

Groups that plan to apply for federal money to help create “Promise Neighborhoods” to fight poverty will have to demonstrate “an unusual degree of discipline and clarity” to make the projects succeed, a new report by the Bridgespan Group says.

The Education Department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement will award one-year planning grants in 2010 to nonprofit groups in 20 cities that want to create Promise Neighborhoods — that is, projects modeled after Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a comprehensive set of services in a specific area to poor children from birth through college.

Drawing on its experience working with antipoverty groups, Bridgespan — a nonprofit consulting group — predicts that policy makers working on such projects will be pressured to base crucial decisions on political considerations rather than on...

Rajiv J. Shah, a former official with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who currently works at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been nominated to head the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The nomination comes as a relief to some aid groups, which have assailed the Obama administration for leaving the post vacant for nearly a year.

Mr. Shah could face a relatively smooth vetting process, as he has already been confirmed once this year by the Senate for his current job as under secretary for research, education, and economics.

Before joining the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mr. Shah served as director of agricultural development with the Gates Foundation. Previously, he was the foundation’s director of strategic opportunities and deputy director of policy and finance for global health. In these roles, he helped create an immunization program that raised...

President Obama’s proposal to limit tax breaks for charitable gifts and other itemized deductions to help pay for a health-care overhaul has so far gone nowhere in Congress.

But Senate Republicans fear the stake has not been driven completely through the proposal’s heart. “Please join us in protecting the full value of the charitable deduction by opposing any amendments to the health-care reform bill that impose a cap on itemized deductions,” 30 senators wrote in a letter last week to their Senate colleagues.

Sen. John Thune, of South Dakota, led the effort, saying in a statement that “the American tradition of charitable giving is particularly important in difficult economic times.”

Several Senate Finance Committee members in September proposed adding caps on the value of itemized deductions to their committee’s health-care bill. But that idea did not make it into the committee’...

It seems foundation leaders are making house calls on the Obama administration.

As part of an effort to be more public about who is meeting with the president and other officials, the administration last month released the names of people who have visited the White House and the adjacent offices of the executive branch.

The list is not comprehensive and only covers the first six months of Mr. Obama’s term, but it shows at least eight philanthropy executives have made visits, some multiple times. (The names of other foundation leaders may appear on the list, but The Chronicle was unable to confirm them.)

The list includes Gara LaMarche, president of the Atlantic Philanthropies; Steve Gunderson, chief executive of the Council on Foundations; Luis Ubiñas, chief executive of the Ford Foundation; Carol Larson, chief executive of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; Risa...

Alan Khazei, the nonprofit leader who is hoping to succeed Edward M. Kennedy as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, is highlighting his national-service work in two new advertisements.

Both spots, one produced for television and the other for the Internet, applaud his work building City Year, the youth service corps, and fighting for the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, a bill signed into law last April that will expand the country’s national-service programs.

“He led a movement to help craft and pass national legislation all from his office as citizen,” says the Internet ad. “Imagine what he could do in the Senate.”

“I’ve always believed one person has the power to change things,” Mr. Khazei says in the television commercial. “So I started City Year and we created 15,000 jobs teaching kids, rebuilding communities.”

Mr. Khazei took a leave of absence from his post...