More than 1,200 foundation officials are here in Atlanta to attend the Council on Foundation’s annual conference.

Sessions will focus on how grant makers can help charities during the recession, how to stem the home foreclosure crisis, improving access to health care in America, and how foundations can work with government to fight poverty at home and abroad.

Among the speakers will be Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council; former President Bill Clinton; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; and Rep. John Lewis, Democrat from Georgia.

While foundations want to help African nations, they must avoid “philanthropic colonialism,” in which projects last for only a few years and ignore local needs, said Peter Buffett, co-chair of the NoVo Foundation.

Speaking on the final day of the Global Philanthropy Forum, Mr. Buffett described how his organization has worked hard to avoid such pitfalls in the African nation of Liberia, where NoVo, the World Bank, and others are trying to rebuild the education system.

For example, in helping to set up vocational schools to teach former child soldiers, the NoVo Foundation and its partners have tried to find out what job training is relevant to the country’s marketplace.

“If you’re turning out tailors and you need plumbers, it makes no sense,” he said.

In addition, he said, to fully appreciate the challenges of working in a country recovering from war like Liberia, donors need...

While microcredit has grown in popularity in recent years, the increasing number of for-profit efforts that provide loans to poor people is a concern, said Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who founded the Grameen Bank.

Mr. Yunus pioneered the idea of providing small loans to poor people to start their own businesses in the 1970s. In 2006 he and the bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for their antipoverty efforts.

Since then microcredit has blossomed around the world. But Mr. Yunus said he is “nervous” that many nonprofit lending groups are converting to businesses and big commercial banks see money-making opportunities in cultivating low-income borrowers.

While some of these institutions say they only want to make a small profit with microcredit, usually “people aren’t satisfied with a little money,” he said. Over time, these business enterprises will become too focused on...

While other philanthropy and fund-raising conferences have experienced declines in attendance this year, roughly the same number of people are attending the 2009 Global Philanthropy Forum as last year.

Steve Fox, a spokesman for the World Affairs Council of Northern California, which runs the event, said that about 400 or so donors and philanthropists have come to Washington to discuss global affairs and giving. While the event is not immune to economic problems and has trimmed some of its costs, it is an elite, members-only meeting, which keeps the numbers of attendees fairly steady.

To join the forum, a philanthropist must apply for membership or be nominated by a fellow donor. While it does not require attendees to make a pledge, like the Clinton Global Initiative, its online eligibility guidelines state: “This event is geared toward individual donors and investors with a...

American philanthropists who want to help Africa should work closely with a spate of new homegrown foundations that are emerging on the continent, said Akwasi Aidoo, executive director of TrustAfrica, during the Global Philanthropy Forum.

“There’s been phenomenal growth of African foundations,” he said. He pointed to the work of Theophilus Danjuma, a businessman and former defense minister of Nigeria, who is establishing a foundation with assets of “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

(Read The Chronicle’s article about the new foundations in Africa.)

Grant-making institutions are also being set up in South Africa, Ghana, and Tanzania, said the head of TrustAfrica, which is a foundation in Dakar, Senegal.

Partnerships between American and African donors are crucial to the long-term success of development and antipoverty work on the continent, he said.

“Africa has been...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her department is starting a new program to work more closely with foundations and philanthropists and has assigned a veteran diplomat to lead the effort.

Speaking during the Global Philanthropy Forum last night, the secretary announced the Global Partnership Initiative, which will work with nonprofit groups, businesses, and others to fight poverty abroad.

“I know that we’ve only been in office for a little shy of a hundred days. But I’m even more convinced now than I was when I became secretary of state that the problems we face today will not be solved by governments alone,” she said.

“It will be in partnerships –- partnerships with philanthropy, with global business, partnerships with civil society. We have to find new ways to fill that space that is unfortunately left to create vacuums in too many places around the world.”

(A...

While the plans for the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation are still being worked out by the Obama administration, its newly appointed head, Sonal Shah, gave some details about them during the Global Philanthropy Forum.

Ms. Shah, who formerly led global-development efforts at Google.org, said the office has three goals:

• To use new communications technology, hold meetings, and start discussions to find out “what are the innovations that are taking place, how are people solving problems, what types of problems are they solving, and where are they” working.

• To provide money to innovative nonprofit projects working with state and local governments and grant makers. For example, she said the president is interested in improving math and science education and assisting states like Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana where local industries need to be...

One of the big challenges facing philanthropy is making sure that what it supports actually works — and for one speaker, proof of its social change comes in the form of Jordanian apple jam.

During a speech at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan produced a small jar of jam and told the audience that it was a sign, albeit a small one, that efforts to improve primary education in her country were making strides.

“Now, I gather from my friend Bill Gates, that at conferences like these if you really want to get the audience buzzing, you have to bring a jar,” she said as she put the container on the podium to nervous laughter, “But don’t worry. I’m not about to unleash a swarm of hungry mosquitoes on you.” (Read how Mr. Gates used mosquitoes during a speech to call attention to his foundation’s efforts to fight malaria.)

The queen said the...

While news coverage of the financial crisis has focused on problems in the United States and other wealthy nations, its effects are starting to compound social problems in developing countries, said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director of the World Bank.

For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 200,000 miners have recently lost their jobs, while in Cambodia, 30,000 garment workers, mostly women, are without work because of closing factories, she told donors and others attending the Global Philanthropy Forum.

What’s more, remittances from relatives living abroad are starting to dry up, which has meant some families are going hungry. “People are cutting back on meals, from three to two meals a day,” said Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, who is the former finance minister of Nigeria.

As a result, she expected malnourishment to rise in poor nations and for more children to drop out of...

President Obama faces a health-care crisis at home, conflicts abroad, and a global financial problem; to solve these issues he needs new ideas from philanthropists and others, Jane Wales, president of the World Affairs Council, told participants at the start of this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington.

“Addressing these and other challenges as president, he like any other world leader is going to need to be able to tap all sources of social innovation, be they from the public, the private, the nongovernmental or philanthropic sector,” said Ms. Wales, who is also co-founder of the forum. “And that’s why we’re all here today.”

About 400 wealthy donors and nonprofit officials from around the world are attending the three-day event.

While she encouraged the participants to assist the Obama administration, she cautioned that they should be careful with how close they work ...