President Obama is asking Congress to provide $50-million to support creative and successful nonprofit groups as part of a new Social Innovation Fund, Melody Barnes, director of the White House domestic policy council, told a session at the meeting here Tuesday.

“The Social Innovation Fund reflects the president’s new governing philosophy: finding and investing in what works; and partnering with and supporting others who are leading change in their communities,” Ms. Barnes said. “We are also working with federal agencies across the government to identify new solutions to problems that have resisted traditional approaches.”

She asked foundations to give her advice about how the fund should operate, what charities it should support, and how the White House can evaluate whether it makes any progress.

Hundreds of donors interested in international causes are gathering in Washington this week at the Global Philanthropy Forum, a project of the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

The participants will discuss domestic programs that could be successful overseas, and international efforts, like microfinance and rural health-care projects from South Asia, that could be imported to America.

Among the speakers will be Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Aga Khan, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, and Muhammed Yunus.

Scores of nonprofit leaders are gathering in New Orleans this week to discuss how nonprofit-run business ventures are faring — and what is next for them

The meeting is the 10th annual conference sponsored by the Social Enterprise Alliance. Speakers scheduled to present keynote speeches include Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Mitch Landrieu, and Jed Emerson, a veteran promoter of nonprofit-run businesses.

We will provide updates of sessions in this conference notebook.

Three new studies shed light on what fund raisers should know about seeking bequests.

Scholars who presented results at the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals noted that people who are single and childless are far more likely than any other types of people to make bequests — no matter how wealthy or dedicated to a charity people with families may be.

And they found that donors of bequests have somewhat different motivations than those who give yearly — so fund raisers need to appeal to them in specially tailored ways. You can read all the details about the findings in a Chronicle of Philanthropy article.

Forty-six percent of nonprofit organizations raised more money last year compared with 2007, according to preliminary findings of an annual survey, released today by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Reflecting the toll exacted by the economic downturn, the percentage of fund raisers whose institutions raised more money last year was a new low in the eight years the survey has been conducted. In a typical year, 60 percent of fund raisers in the survey report being able to raise more money.

After suffering a downturn in contributions in the last quarter of 2008, many charities may be seeing an uptick in both the number of donations made and the amount pledged, L. Gregg Carlson, chief executive of the IDC telemarketing and direct-mail company told a group of fund-raising consultants gathered in New Orleans on Friday to discuss trends before the annual Association of Fundraising Professionals meeting opened here Sunday.

Mr. Carlson said he took a preliminary look at how his clients are doing in the first quarter of the year, and he said he was pleasantly surprised. He said organizations that explained to donors that “we need you now more than ever” were doing well.

At a session held by the Giving Institute, an organization that represents big fund-raising consulting firms, veteran consultants said that more and more donors are cutting back on gifts to the institutions...

Barack Obama painted walls an emergency shelter in Washington this morning as part of his effort to urge Americans to devote more time to community service.

In an event designed to mark the holiday commemorating the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Obama volunteered at Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a charity that provides shelter to homeless teenagers and other services.

“Given the crisis that we’re in and the hardships that so many people are going through, we can’t allow any idle hands,” President-elect Obama told the assembled volunteers, reports Bloomberg news service. “Everybody is going to have to pitch in, and I think the American people are ready to do that.”

Michelle Obama and her daughters spent the morning at Washington’s Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium to help prepare care packages for military troops serving overseas.

Both Mr. and Ms. Obama have a long history in...

Ruby Wood has just died, leaving a very special bequest: $6-million for the six people who helped take care of her in her old age to give away to other people who care for others as well as other people in need of care.

That’s the basic story at the center of a new online game to be unveiled by United Cerebral Palsy later this month, the organization’s chief executive, Stephen Bennett, told participants at the Independent Sector meeting here today.

The game, tentatively called “Ruby’s Bequest,” is the latest example of how nonprofit groups are using online games and simulations to get people involved in, and thinking about, social issues.

“We thought, what if we could get people from multiple points of view to investigate the future of health care and of care giving, and look at the problems together, they could come up with some solutions,” Mr. Bennett said.

Players will...

Nonprofit groups on Sunday got an optimistic view of how the historic 2008 presidential elections and the administration of Presdent-elect Barack Obama, a Democrat, will effect their organizations.

Independent Sector, a nationwide association of foundations, and corporate giving programs, kicked off its annual meeting in Philadelphia with speakers who analyzed election results.

The stature of the nonprofit world cannot help but improve under an Obama administration, said James Capehart, an editorial writer at The Washington Post. He added that that the best and brightest leaders of tax-exempt organizations may be tapped to work for the new president.

Judy Woodruff, political editor of PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer, explained that Mr. Obama’s campaign broke new ground by operating as a 50-state grass-roots group and that he understands the power that kind of organization can...

With the whole world watching the indices that follow financial markets second-by-second, Alan J. Abramson, a scholar of the nonprofit world, wonders why there’s not a similar index tracking the nonprofit world.

At a meeting of the Independent Sector here, Mr. Abramson suggested that charity leaders consider building what he called a ”Dow Jones index for nonprofits.”

“With the nonprofit sector, we get analysis one, two, three years after the fact, looking at the 990s or waiting for some survey or another,” said Mr. Abramson, professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University and a senior fellow in the nonprofit sector and philanthropy program at the Aspen Institute. “We need the same solid, immediate information to track performance in the nonprofit sector as you get with the Dow in the financial markets.”

Mr. Abramson said that much of the data that...