Small universities’ endowments did significantly better in the just-ended fiscal year than their larger, higher-profile peers, which plunged more deeply into alternative investments such as hedge funds, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The five largest single-university endowments — Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — expect to finish the year with 25- to 30-percent losses. The median decline in the first 11 months of fiscal 2009 was 20 percent, and endowments with less than $100-million in assets lost 16 percent, on average.

“A lesson from this crisis is that following what the larger guys have done is not necessarily a road map to success,” said Daniel Jick, head of HighVista Strategies, in Boston, which manages endowment money for small academic institutions.

To learn more about how all types of nonprofit endowments are faring,...

In an article adapted from a new book on world hunger, The Wall Street Journal reports on Howard Buffett’s behind-the-scenes work to combat Africa’s food shortage.

Mr. Buffett, the second of the billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett’s three children, spends much of his time in Africa, trying to spread agricultural practices with which he’s had success on his own corn and soybean farm in Illinois. His Howard G. Buffett Foundation will disburse about $38-million this year to help African farmers develop drought- and disease-resistant crops and market their wares to United Nations relief programs, among other agricultural projects.

The foundation’s spending has grown eightfold since 2006, when the elder Mr. Buffett began making annual contributions of Berkshire Hathaway stock to his children’s charities.

Read a profile of Howard Buffet from The Chronicle’s archive.

(A paid...

The tangled finances of the American Housing Foundation — a national charity whose founder, Steve Sterquell, died in April in an apparent suicide — are explored in a two-part Amarillo Globe-News series.

The foundation, which developed and operated affordable-housing complexes through a network of partnerships with nonprofit and for-profit entities, entered voluntary bankruptcy and embarked on a reorganization following Mr. Sterquell’s death and the subsequent resignation of his son, Steve Sterquell II. The organization, which maintains its headquarters in Amarillo, Tex., faces a barrage of lawsuits involving $38.5-million in disputed funds.

Kobe Bryant, the NBA superstar whose popularity in China rivals that of native-born basketball player Yao Ming, is further raising his profile in the country with the start of a charity there, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Kobe Bryant China Fund will work with the state-supported Soong Ching Ling Foundation to raise money within the country for education and health programs. Mr. Bryant’s existing U.S. charity, the Kobe Bryant Family Foundation, will also work to strengthen U.S.-China ties by teaching American middle-school students about Chinese language and culture.

In July Mr. Bryant will make his fourth visit in as many months to China as part of a campaign to establish his presence in the world’s most populous country. “I think he can be a one-man State Department, reaching directly to the people,” said Donald Tang, a Chinese financial adviser who will guide the...

Lisa Marie Falcone has started to rise in prominence on the city’s cultural and philanthropic scene, reports The New York Times.

Ms. Falcone, the wife of the billionaire investor Philip A. Falcone, surprised many attendees at a gala this month for Friends of the High Line when she took to the stage unannounced to match a $10-million grant from the media mogul Barry Diller and his wife, the designer Diane von Furstenburg. The Falcones had previously made smaller donations and raised funds for the project to turn a downtown elevated railway into a landscaped esplanade.

Ms. Falcone has also chaired several events for the American Museum of Natural History and last month joined the City Ballet board.

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In a column that appeared on PoynterOnline, a former newspaper executive analyzes the prospects for foundation-supported journalism as more than two-dozen news-media organizations meet this week to discuss forming a national nonprofit investigative network.

“To a degree that has surprised many people, foundations and philanthropy have ramped up in multiple ways to fill fast-emerging information gaps or create entirely new ways of producing news that citizens need,” writes David Westphal, a senior fellow at the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.

Representatives from National Public Radio, Huffington Post, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and other prominent news-media outlets and nonprofit groups gathered on Tuesday for Watchdogs at Pocantico, a three-day conference at a former Rockefeller estate in upstate New York.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has wrapped up a 10-month search for a new director, choosing Cleveland Museum of Art chief Timothy Rub, reports The New York Times. He replaces the popular longtime museum head Anne d’Harnoncourt, who died last year.

H.F. Lenfest, chairman of the museum’s board, said 22 applicants were interviewed for the position. “The chief curators already knew and respected Timothy,” Mr. Lenfest said. “He’s a good listener, has good judgment and the right background. He’ll hit the road running.”

In other arts news, the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles, raised about $57-million in the first half of 2009, reversing a decade-long decline in donations, according to Bloomberg. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation pledged $15-million to match gifts that replenish the museum’s endowment and another $15-million to support exhibitions.

Also, the Portland...

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, reports Government and Politics Watch, a Chronicle online column.

Our senior editor, Suzanne Perry, is at the event and will provide an online update when it wraps up.

Listen to our podcast, Philanthropy This Week, featuring interviews with Chronicle reporters and editors on our new survey about corporate giving at the nation’s biggest companies — and why many nonprofit chief executives are volunteering to take pay cuts.

The Supreme Court has failed to decide on whether a documentary a nonprofit group wanted to broadcast about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 presidential race should have been regulated as if it were a campaign ad, the Associated Press reports.

The court said Monday it will hear arguments in the case again in a special session on September 9.

Citizens United, a conservative not-for-profit group, wanted to air ads for the movie in Democratic primary states and also make the film available to cable subscribers on demand without complying with federal campaign finance law.