Several major Boston nonprofit groups provide low-interest loans as a perk to their top executives, the Boston Herald reports.

The heads of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies have outstanding mortgage loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the organizations. Collectively the three executives received salary and benefits of nearly $2-million last year. Other charities have signed lucrative contracts with private consulting firms run by their CEO’s.

About a dozen Boston-area nonprofit groups paid their top executives $300,000 to $600,000 last year, the paper also reports.

Several former leaders of Harvard’s endowment say they warned university officials for years that they were taking too high a risk with Harvard’s cash investments, according to The Boston Globe.

Two former endowment chiefs, Jack Meyer and Mohamed El-Erian, say they repeatedly told then-Harvard president Lawrence Summers, school financial staff members, and board members that the institution was investing too much of its general operating account with the endowment’s mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity, according to the Globe.

The cash account, which reached $5.1-billion during Mr. Summers’s tenure, lost $1.8-billion in the market downturn, forcing the school to tighten budgets, put off expansion plans, and issue bonds with hefty interest payments to cover the losses. Mr. Summers declined to be quoted in the article.

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Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon’s trial on theft charges has shed light on charity solicitations she conducted as City Council president and in her current office, says The Baltimore Sun.

The jury entered a sixth day of deliberations Monday in the case, which revolves around Ms. Dixon’s collection of gift cards, ostensibly for donation to charities. Maryland State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh contends that Ms. Dixon stole some of the cards for personal use, an allegation she denies.

Ms. Dixon’s requests for and distribution of retail gift cards and a separate holiday giveaway program differed from her predecessors’ charity efforts and lacked a system for accountability, according to the Sun.

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The community organizing group Acorn can be paid for work it did under federal contracts signed before Congress banned giving federal money to the controversial nonprofit group, reports The New York Times.

The ban, signed into law by President Obama on October 1 as part of a larger spending bill, states that no taxpayer money can be “provided to” Acorn or its affiliates. The Congressional vote followed the release of videos that apparently show staff members in two Acorn offices advising a would-be pimp and prostitute on how to set up a brothel.

The Justice Department last week said the legislation should not be applied to pre-existing contracts. Since 1994 Acorn has received about $53-million in federal money, largely in Department of Housing and Urban Development grants for affordable-housing services.

Acorn affiliate Acorn Housing closed its El Paso, Tex., office last week and ...

The struggles of a Toledo, Ohio, nonprofit agency that trains developmentally disabled adults to assemble car parts shows the recession’s particularly deep impact on the disabled, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Lott Industries, which employs some 1,200 people with developmental disabilities and has received a top auto-industry designation as a quality supplier, has lost half its revenue as contracts with belt-tightening car makers have dried up. While the organization has not let any workers go, it has reduced wages and sick pay and is using its reserve funds to maintain payroll.

For the second year in a row, New York’s “Sidewalk Santa” charity drive is operating only online due to the wan economy, the Associated Press reports.

Volunteers of America-Greater New York, which operates the 107-year-old program, says it lacks the money to manage and pay formerly homeless men to play Santa and collect donations for the needy in front of the city’s poshest stores in the month before Christmas.

As with the traditional collection boxes, online gifts to Sidewalk Santa will pay for food vouchers for people who can’t afford holiday meals.

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, notes Government and Politics Watch, The Chronicle’s online column.

An effort to develop so-called microvolunteering — through which people help charities and local governments using their cell phones — has received a lot of positive press, but one charity consultant argues it should be “slated for extinction,” notes Give and Take in its daily digest of the best blog posts about the nonprofit world.

Plus:

• An appeal for foundations to talk more about their mistakes.

• Why the 25 “best” philanthropists list by Barron’s magazine is “too cute by half.”

• A look at social entrepreneurship in East Asia.

• Criticism of fund raisers who aren’t willing to donate their own money.

• Reasons social-networking sites won’t hurt an organization’s brand.

• Tips for encouraging children to get involved in philanthropy.

Robert F. Sharpe, a Memphis fund-raising consultant, offers his thoughts for how to get wealthy people to overcome their wariness of making big charitable commitments, The Chronicle’s Prospecting column notes.

Plus: Bank of America reduces its employee matching gifts.

Russia’s president, Dimitri Medvedev, is calling for tax incentives and other measures to help the country’s nonprofit sector, which was strictly regulated and scrutinized under the administration of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, says The New York Times.

“Our main goal is to support the authority of nonprofit groups in society and the attraction to this sector of more talented people and philanthropic resources,” Mr. Medvedev said in a meeting Monday with human-rights advocates.

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