Several Obama administration officials spoke at the Council on Foundations meeting this week about their interest in working with foundations to fight the nation’s most urgent problems.

While the discussion at the event focused primarily on how foundations can influence the White House, Ralph Smith, chief executive of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore, and chairman of the council, wondered how a closer relationship with government would change philanthropy.

He said that foundations would need to be more agile, confident, and willing to work hand-in-hand with each other.

In terms of speed, he said grant making is usually akin “to giving birth.” The decision to make a contribution can be a “nine-month process” as a staff member makes a recommendation to a chief executive, he or she then deliberates with the board of directors, and finally a decision may be made.

In...

The U.S. Treasury Department wants to work with grant makers to revise its voluntary guidelines that seek to prevent charitable dollars from inadvertently flowing to terrorists, a department official said at the Council on Foundations meeting.

Michael Rosen, a policy adviser in the department’s Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, said the office wants to work with foundations “to better refine the guidance.”

While saying that the Obama administration is still very concerned about the possibility of philanthropic money helping organizations like Hamas and other militant groups, he said the office’s guidelines can be “more responsive to your needs.”

Foundations have said the guidelines are too onerous and prevent some donors from making grants overseas.

Mr. Rosen also promoted the American Task Force on Palestine as a possible model to make grants in “high-risk ...

President Obama’s plan to limit charitable tax deductions for wealthy people was “hotly debated” in the White House, but ultimately the administration decided that the government should hold onto more tax revenue to improve health care, Melody Barnes, director of the White House domestic policy council, told foundation officials at the Council on Foundations meeting.

During a question-and-answer session after her speech, which focused on the creation of the Social Innovation Fund, she acknowledged the concerns that the tax plan, which would go into effect in 2011, may hamper charitable giving. “It’s certainly an issue we recognize,” she said.

However, she said the money the change would generate is a key facet of President Obama’s agenda — it would be used to support a cash reserve to make the country’s health-care system more affordable and accessible.

The decision was a...

A recent report from the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy has roiled the foundation world, and during the Council on Foundations meeting several philanthropy officials debated the committee’s recommendations for good grant making.

The foundation watchdog’s contentious report, which was released in March, encouraged foundations to award at least 50 percent of their grants to disadvantaged populations, to provide a total of 6 percent of their assets to charities each year, and made other recommendations for “philanthropy at its best.”

(Read The Chronicle’s article about the publication.)

William W. Ginsberg, president of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, said adopting the committee’s benchmarks would hurt his organization’s ability to encourage charitable efforts by a broad group of Connecticut donors.

While he and the foundation are concerned about...

With encouraging signs that the H1N1 virus may not be as dangerous as first believed, Richard E. Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said foundations and philanthropists helped the agency prepare for a potential pandemic.

“Foundations play a critical role during emergencies,” Dr. Besser, a pediatrician, told members of the Council on Foundations.

For example, in 2001, as the agency, in Atlanta, worked frantically to trace the anthrax attacks on journalists and members of Congress, it set up a make-shift emergency-response center in an auditorium.

Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot and a board member of the CDC Foundation, a nonprofit group that helps the agency, visited the somewhat jury-rigged facility and began raising money for a state-of-the-art operations center to monitor health emergencies. Mr. Marcus’s foundation also...

Kathleen Sebelius, the new secretary of health and human services, called on foundations to be the “research-and-development arm” of her agency as it seeks to improve health care.

During a speech at the Council on Foundations, Ms. Sebelius said the Obama administration wants to work with foundations to change the nation’s health system to be more efficient and inclusive.

While the money grant makers provide is key to this, she said perhaps more important is their ability to work with grass-roots charities and needy people to create a discussion about how health services should change.

These “communications connections” will be critical to the success of President Obama’s health plans. “Health-care reform won’t work if the only people engaged are inside the Beltway,” she said. “Help us help all Americans.”

Ms. Sebelius, the former governor of Kansas, said she learned about the...

Grant makers need to emulate the civil-rights movement and challenge Washington and the country to fix national problems, said Rep. John Lewis, Democrat from Georgia, during the Council on Foundation’s annual meeting.

As the head of the Ways and Means Committee’s panel on oversight, which oversees tax-exempt organizations, he is looking for foundations “to be creative, to be daring.”

Mr. Lewis, a former civil-rights leader himself who helped organize sit-ins in the 1960s, said his parents discouraged him from pushing for social change. “They said, ‘Don’t get in the way, don’t get in trouble,’” he said. “I got in trouble, I got in the way.”

He said nonprofit groups should do the same and push members of Congress to change public policies to help the poor and other issues.

“Don’t be afraid of us,” he said. “We need to hear what you’re doing to help the common good and make this ...

With more than $780-billion made available by the Obama administration’s stimulus package, foundations can help federal, state, and local government agencies decide how to best spend that money so it creates jobs and helps the economy, said G. Edward DeSeve, a senior adviser at the Office of Management and Budget.

Mr. DeSeve is the government official in charge of tracking how the hundreds of billions of dollars in the package are used. During a speech at the Council on Foundation’s conference, he said grant makers can help in three ways.

• Foundations can make sure that the poor and other disadvantaged people have a say in stimulus efforts. As part of this, he said that foundations should assist small charities that want to apply for government funds but do not have the training or expertise to do so.

• Grant makers can make sure that separate government streams of money a...

The economic downturn appears to have hurt this year’s annual meeting of the Council on Foundations, with attendance lower than what it has been in previous years.

About 1,200 nonprofit officials have come here to Atlanta for the meeting, while about 1,900 attended the event in 2007. Last year, the council held a meeting near Washington, which combined all of its yearly meetings into one. More than 3,000 people attended that conference.

The council expected less people in Atlanta in part because of its big event last year. But the economy is also having an effect as foundations cut their travel costs to save money.

During a speech at the start of the conference, Steve Gunderson, the council’s chief executive, said that given the economic concerns the number of people at the event is “incredible.”

He said several conference goers have traveled to Atlanta on their own dime and ...

While foundations have lost around $200-billion in assets last year, the economic recession and the Obama administration present an opportunity for grant makers to innovate and forge new relationships with federal, state, and local governments, said Steve Gunderson, the chief executive of the Council on Foundations.

Speaking on the first day of the council’s annual conference, Mr. Gunderson said there is an opportunity today to “transform philanthropy’s role in society.”

“We are at a place in time unlike any other in our recent history,” he said.

To help curb the economic fallout and assist other national problems, President Obama has called for greater collaboration with the nonprofit world — and foundations need to respond, Mr. Gunderson said.

He expects new “public-philanthropic partnerships” with the administration to improve American schools, expand job training, and...