To preserve their rapidly eroding endowments, some of America’s universities are looking to sell parts of their investment portfolios privately, according to The New York Times.

Colleges have relied heavily on private equity, hedge funds, and other so-called alternative investments in recent years, but with the value of such holdings falling rapidly, several universities, including Harvard and the University of Virginia, are looking to shed some of these investments.

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The founder of The Gap clothing empire wants to give San Francisco his $1-billion art collection for a new contemporary art museum — but is running into opposition from residents and community groups in the museum’s proposed neighborhood, according to Bloomberg.com.

Don Fisher, founder of Gap Inc., offered more than a year ago to donate his art collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and other artists, to create a museum at the Presidio, a former military outpost that is now a national park. But the proposed squat glass building would be nestled among historic mission and colonial-revival design buildings.

“The word I hear most often is ‘appalling,’” said Gary Widman, president of the Presidio Historical Association. “The public is almost unanimously opposed.” The Presidio Trust, which runs the park, is scheduled to vote on the plan next year.

The Newseum, which opened in April in Washington and focuses on the history of the news media, has announced plans to cut its 250-member staff by 10 percent, according to The Washington Post.

The museum is supported mostly by the Freedom Forum, whose endowment dropped from $600-million to $450-million during this year’s stock market turmoil, according to the Newseum’s chief executive.

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Reaction has been muted among American Muslim organizations to this week’s conviction of the leaders of the nonprofit Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for money laundering, tax fraud, and supporting terrorism, according to The New York Times.

The federal case against the Dallas charity, which was found guilty of supporting the Middle Eastern terrorist group Hamas, had long been a source of dispute among other Muslim groups, say leaders of those organizations, with some seeing evidence of an anti-Muslim bias in the government’s case and others suspecting Holy Land of Hamas ties.

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Connecticut’s attorney general has queried the chairman of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a Virginia charity, over “serious red flags” in the group’s finances, according to The Hartford Courant.

The organization, which helps pay the legal fees of police officers facing charges, has collected millions from donors nationwide but has granted comparatively small amounts to clients, while giving hundred of thousands of dollars to conservative groups to which the charity’s executives have ties.

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund’s chairman did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.

The fight over California’s vote this month to ban gay marriage in the state continues to produce political fallout, some of which is affecting the nonprofit world, according to reports in The New York Times and The Boston Globe’s online blog Brainiac.

The Times reports that California officials will examine charges that the Mormon Church failed to report several nonmonetary contributions — such as phone banks, a Web site, and commercials — that it donated to support a ballot measure to overturn the state’s gay-marriage law. Such disclosures are required by law.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints said the church will comply with the investigation but had no further comment on the accusations.

The Globe‘s Brainiac blog notes than another high-profile supporter of the ballot measure, John Templeton Jr., president of the Templeton Foundation, is now...

The Internal Revenue Service plans to undertake a long-term study of fund raising and spending by charitable organizations, reports Government and Politics Watch, The Chronicle’s online column.

Lois G. Lerner, director of the exempt-organization division of the IRS, told reporters that it is especially important to monitor the nonprofit world during the current economic downturn as demand for charitable services rises and donations fall.

Plus:

• Barack Obama’s economic aides are winning praise from international-development charities.

• Arts lovers are urging Mr. Obama to create a Cabinet-level position to oversee cultural activities.

• A charity is holding an inaugural ball to celebrate community service and the engagement of young voters in this year’s election.

As the economy sputters, many nonprofit groups are searching for new ways to cut costs without slicing services. In some cases, collaborating or even merging with another organization is one way to reconcile this challenge.

But charities often have reservations about such alliances as well as questions about how they work in reality.

In an online discussion on Tuesday, December 2, we will be joined by two experts to answer your questions:

• William Foster is a partner at the Bridgespan Group, a Boston organization that advises charities on management issues.

• Lois Savage is president of the Lodestar Foundation, in Phoenix.

The Chronicle’s online discussions are free and open to everyone. People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of getting answers.

An archive of past discussions is available at http://philanthropy.com/live.

Because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, we will not be sending you a report on Thursday or Friday. We will be back in your mailbox on Monday.

The staff of The Chronicle of Philanthropy wishes you a happy holiday.

A federal jury in Dallas on Monday declared that a Muslim charity and five men who worked with it were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12-million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, reports The Dallas Morning News.

The charity in the case — The Holy Land Foundation, in Richardson, Tex. — was one of the biggest Muslim charities in the country until the government shut it down on charges of terrorism.

The ruling came after a previous hearing of the case ended in a mistrial. Nonprofit leaders have been watching the case closely as the federal government sets the lines for what kind of activities charitable organizations can conduct overseas.

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