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Fund raisers ought to prepare now to take advantage of the economy's slow recovery, Susan Raymond, an economist and one of the founders of the consulting group Changing Our World, told an audience this morning at the annual conference here of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. 

Urging fund raisers to look outside their own circumstances and pay more attention to economic trends, Ms. Raymond described some factors that will shape the economy over the next few years.

• The high unemployment rate. The Department of Commerce doesn't anticipate the unemployment rate to drop to 5 to 6 percent, where it was in 2007, until 2013, Ms. Raymond said. That's worrisome for fund raisers because the unemployment rate has a bigger influence on individual giving than other economic factors, she said.
• A global recovery. America's recovery will depend in large part on its ability to...

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Drawing on his experiences as a gay man born to a Polish mother and raised by an African-American family, Joe Steele urged fund raisers at the Association of Fundraising Professionals annual conference here to learn how to build stronger relationships with donors of different ages, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and race.

Mr. Steele, who has consulted with charities and companies including AT&T and Johnson & Johnson, emphasized the importance of making others feel comfortable sharing information about their own cultures.

"You don't have to be a cultural anthropologist," he told the audience. But he said that fund raisers needed to show interest in other people's cultural backgrounds while respecting how much information individuals want to share-and what they want to keep to themselves.

Mr. Steele also said that if fund raisers are going to ask others to discuss their...

“Public-private partnership” is a favorite buzzword in philanthropy, particularly now that the Obama administration has voiced a commitment to working alongside foundations and nonprofit groups.

But what do such partnerships among governments, businesses, foundations, and charities look like? And how can philanthropists create or participate in such efforts?

Jean Case, who runs the Case Foundation, with her husband Steve discussed those questions at a session today along with Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, and Shelly M. Esque, vice president of legal and corporate affairs with the Intel Corporation.

The three described their work as part of the U.S. Palestinian Partnership, an effort started in 2007 to expand economic and educational opportunities for Palestinians. The effort was one of about four large “public-private partnerships” started by Condoleezza...

The development of innovative clean-energy businesses in poor countries could, in 15 years, be “rivaling where the microfinance sector is today,” Christine Eibs-Singer, co-founder of the nonprofit group E+Co, told donors assembled at the Global Philanthropy Forum.

Ms. Eibs-Singer, whose organization supports clean energy projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America said such efforts are poised to grow quickly, just as microfinance has done over the last decade or so. She encouraged people with experience working in microfinance to share what they have learned, particularly with respect to the importance of providing long-term philanthropic investments.

“We can take a lot of lessons learned that went into growing microfinance to growing this space,” she said, “and we can recognize that there are a lot of benefits of linking these sectors together.”

Ms. Eibs-Singer described the...

Thomas Siebel, a technology entrepreneur and chairman of the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, said today he plans to establish a $20-million prize to encourage the creation of affordable energy-efficient homes.

Mr. Siebel, whose foundation is best known for its efforts to prevent methamphetamine use, told an audience at the Global Philanthropy Forum that he has been working for two years with researchers at Stanford, Princeton, and other institutions on the project.

While it’s possible today to build homes that have zero energy footprint, Mr. Siebel said, it’s an incredibly costly task. By contrast, the philanthropist said, he wants to support the development of energy-efficient homes that are no more expensive to build than ordinary houses.

Mr. Siebel said he plans to officially announce the prizes this fall. The awards will be given out in three phases: first, for the...

Kiva.org, the popular Web site that enables people to give small loans to entrepreneurs overseas, is attracting more and more donors despite the recession, its co-founder said today.

Matt Flannery told an audience at the Global Philanthropy Forum that traffic to the site, and the number of loans being provided, has doubled since late last year. People now lend, on average, a total of $1-million per week through the site, and this week alone the site brought in $2-million.

That said, people who give through Kiva.org are contributing smaller amounts. But the drop in the size of loans hasn’t been large enough to offset the big jump in users, Mr. Flannery said.

“If you’re innovative on the Internet, you can get a larger piece of a shrinking pie,” he said.

He also described how enthused entrepreneurs overseas have been by Kiva’s recent announcement that it will enable borrowers in ...

Grant makers, philanthropists, and donor advisers began the second day of the Global Philanthropy Forum with a discussion on how to expand access to health care around the world. But first they heard from Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office for Health Reform, about America’s health-care challenges.

Ms. DeParle described how, even in a country as wealthy as the United States, roughly 47 million people lack health insurance. She called on philanthropy to share its ideas, including those culled from abroad, with the federal government as it seeks to expand health-care coverage.

“Some of the most innovative ideas have come from you, your research, you studies, and your models,” she said.

Ms. DeParle pointed to Mexico as an example of a country that had worked successfully to improve its health-care system.

Speaking at the Washington event, Julio Frenk, Mexico’s...

Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been an official day of service since 1994, but organizers are hopeful that Americans will turn out in record numbers this year, thanks to a push by President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, to encourage volunteering on that day.

USAService.org, a Web site created by Mr. Obama’s inaugural committee, has registered more than 11,000 volunteering events to be held this Monday. HandsOn Network, which organizes volunteers, will be managing 2,600 projects nationwide.

Among those pledging to make Monday “a day on, not a day off”:

• More than 5,000 employees with Kaiser Permanente, who will deliver coats to homeless shelters in Washington, clean up a Boys & Girls Club facility in Georgia, and participate in dozens of other projects across the country.

• The musicians Herbie Hancock and Josh Groban, who will be helping Feeding America, the ...