Ten of the 20 cities awarded grants this year to start volunteer corps inspired by New York’s Cities of Service program are kicking off their programs this month, the Associated Press reports.

Service campaigns are under way in Chicago; Detroit; Los Angeles; Nashville; Newark, N.J.; Omaha; Philadelphia; Sacramento; Seattle; and Savannah, Ga., which received $200,000 grants in January from the Rockefeller Foundation and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s philanthropy. Ten more cities were awarded grants in July.

The goal of the program is not just to recruit volunteers but to use them to focus on solving specific problems. For example, Newark’s program will center on education and health, while Nashville, slammed by floods this year, will emphasize disaster recovery.

New York’s volunteer campaign, started by Mr. Bloomberg last year, has provided CPR training, fitness classes, flu...

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett said their dinner Wednesday night with a group of China’s richest people exceeded their expectations and produced some “very generous” charity pledges, according to Reuters and The New York Times.

At a news conference Thursday, Mr. Gates said about 50 people attended the gathering, about two-thirds of those invited. The event sparked widespread public discussion in China about private philanthropy and the willingness of the country’s burgeoning billionaire class to give.

While declining to identify individual donors, Mr. Gates said, “There were some gifts that were very generous.” He said attendees “saw the charitable sector [in China] at an early stage and were asking about what lessons there might be from the United States."

The American philanthropists said they might make a similar trip to India, which also boasts a fast-growing class of wealthy...

For the first time in its history, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas is launching its fall campaign without an annual goal, opting instead for a five-year target, according to The Dallas Morning News.

The organization, which last year raised $56-million in pledges for 92 charities, set a goal of securing $313-million over five years. It is also opening up its grant-making process, allowing any nonprofit organization to apply for money.

Past years saw regional United Way grants going to roughly the same group of nonprofit organizations. Officials of the Dallas chapter said competition for grants will ensure that funds go to the organizations best able to meet its main goals of improving education, lifting families out of poverty, and improving access to health care.

To read about how United Ways are doing nationwide, see this article from the latest issue of The Chronicle of...

Environmental, health, and anti-poverty activists from four countries will share this year’s Right Livelihood Award, an annual prize known as the “alternative Nobel,” reports the Associated Press.

The $270,000 award will be split by Nnimmo Bassey of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria; Shrikrishna Upadhyay, a Nepalese antipoverty activist; Erwin Kraeutler, a Brazilian bishop who has fought deforestation and defended the rights of indigenous tribes; and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which provides health care to Palestinians.

The philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull created the award in 1980 to recognize work he believed the Nobel Prizes ignored. It is presented in Sweden in December, shortly before the Nobel ceremony.

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Jane Mendillo, chief executive officer of Harvard Management Company, tells Bloomberg that reshaping the university’s hard-hit endowment is a “five-year proposition.”

Since taking office in July 2008, two months before the Lehman Brothers collapse set off the global financial crunch, Ms. Mendillo has focused on reducing the institution’s investment in high-risk private-equity and hedge funds and brought more of its assets under the purview of in-house managers.

Harvard has “had to put the longer-term plans on hold” while riding out the market turmoil,” said Ms. Mendillo. The endowment recently reported an 11-percent gain on its investments for the 2009-10 fiscal year following the previous year’s 27-percent plunge.

Following the example of for-profit social ventures like Toms Shoes, which gives a pair of shoes to the needy for each one sold, more start-ups are incorporating charity into their business model, The Wall Street Journal says.

Businesses following the “one-for-one” strategy pioneered by Toms, a Santa Monica company, are pinning their hopes for profitability on consumers’ willingness to pay more for products associated with a cause in which they believe, the newspaper says.

An adviser to some of Britain’s biggest philanthropists is calling for charities to be classified on the basis of most and least worthy causes, writes The Guardian.

Martin Brookes, chief executive of New Philanthropy Capital, said such standings would help discourage ill-informed or self-interested giving and promote philanthropy directed to where it can do the most social good.

“We need to ask whether it is possible to design frameworks that catalog charitable causes, and, ultimately, charities, according to their field of work,” Mr. Brookes said in a London speech Wednesday. “Attempts to prioritize charitable causes are valuable, forcing us to question the choices we make when giving away money."

Stephen Bubb, head of Britain’s Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, said the suggestion of a “moral index” for charities was dangerous. “People need to be better...

Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee want the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether nonprofit advocacy groups are violating rules limiting their political spending, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal write.

Advocacy groups categorized under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code have become increasingly popular vehicles for campaign spending, particularly on behalf of Republicans. Such organizations are not required to identify their donors as long as their purpose is not primarily political.

In a letter sent to the IRS commissioner on Tuesday, Montana Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, asked the agency to assess whether advocacy groups are using the tax code “to eliminate transparency in the funding of our elections.”

A spokesman for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, two groups that have been involved in efforts to defeat...

The Mexican telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, said Wednesday that his money would be better spent on projects that create jobs than on charity, according to Bloomberg.

Speaking at a conference in Sydney as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett prepare to host a dinner in Beijing to promote philanthropy among China’s wealthy, Mr. Slim said employment is the best weapon to fight poverty.

“Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything,” he said, adding, in apparent reference to the Gates-Buffett “Giving Pledge,” “To give 50 percent, 40 percent, that does nothing.”

Wednesday’s dinner has sparked an unprecedented public debate in China about the value of philanthropy and whether the Gates-Buffett giving approach is appropriate for the country, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters write.

In India, another country...

The writer and producer David Simon, the main creative force behind the acclaimed TV series The Wire and Treme, told The Baltimore Sun he might give his $500,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship to charity.

“The entertainment industry pays quite well, so my first inclination is to pass it through and do something charitable,” said Mr. Simon, who was named Tuesday as one of 23 winners of this year’s “genius” grants.

Daniel Socolow, director of the fellows program, cautioned Mr. Simon about giving the grant away, noting that it could finance a worthy but noncommercial creative project.

The 2010 class of MacArthur fellows represents a historic low for New York-area “geniuses,” with only three living and working in the greater metropolitan area, The Wall Street Journal notes. At least five individuals who reside in the New York area have won the $500,000 grants in each of the past five...