Former President Bill Clinton's annual philanthropy meeting wrapped up Thursday, with appearances from President Obama, Michelle Obama, and Bill Gates. 

Ms. Obama, who was introduced by her husband, spoke about helping America's veterans find jobs. Mr. Clinton interviewed Mr. Gates, who expressed concern about governments cutting back on their aid budgets amid the global economic crisis. 

And Haiti's president, Rene Preval, spoke about helping his country recover from the devastating earthquake in January that left an estimated 1.5 million people homeless.

Mr. Clinton said nearly 300 commitments of money and other resources, totaling an estimated $6-billion, were announced during the three days of the Clinton Global Initiative conference.

Pledges announced on the final day included:

• TrustAfrica, a grant maker with headquarters in Dakar, Senegal, pledged to invest $2.7-million in...

Road safety, water issues, and religious tolerance drew pledges yesterday from some of the 1,300 business, government, and nonprofit leaders who are participating in this year's Clinton Global Initiative. Altogether, 40 new commitments to solving social problems were made during the second day of the event, according to its organizers.

They include:

• A $3.75-million grant from the Coca-Cola Company to start eight water projects in Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and other African countries that have large Muslim populations. The grant is part of a $7.5-milion project that is also being supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.N. Development Program.
• The FIA Foundation, a British charity that promotes road safety, will spend along with the International Development Bank and other organizations, $10-million to promote safe driving over the next decade, which...

Peace in Sudan and Liberia, noninfectious diseases, and efforts to assess the performance of organizations that offer small loans to the poor were among the causes that drew pledges yesterday at the Clinton Global Initiative.

The commitments were announced at the opening and closing of yesterday's discussions, which focused on empowering women and girls, achieving peace in the Middle East, and the role of profit in microfinance, among other topics. Today's conversations will focus on topics including empowering poor farmers and fighting cancer in the developing world. 

The commitments included:

• A $7-million pledge from Humanity United to promote peace in Sudan and Liberia ahead of important political events in both countries next year. Humanity United is a philanthropy started by Pam Omidyar, wife of the founder of eBay.
• A $1-million pledge from the Medtronic Foundation, the...

Omidyar Network, the philanthropy started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, will invest $55-million in technology to promote government transparency and help people rise out of poverty.

The pledge, announced at the Clinton Global Initiative, will be spent over three years.

About $30-million will go to organizations that use technology to share information about how people are governed and enable them to have a greater say in the process. The new commitment expands on Omidyar's work in the realm of government transparency; to date, the philanthropy has supported organizations including the Sunlight Foundation, mySociety, and Global Integrity.

The remaining $25-million will support cutting-edge efforts to use mobile technology to expand access to banking, health care, agriculture, commerce, and other activities and services. Past grants in the field of mobile technology have gone to...

Nearly 300 new commitments, valued at a total of $6-billion, are slated to be announced at this year's Clinton Global Intiative, according to former President Bill Clinton, who welcomed guests to his annual philanthropy gathering in New York.

As Mr. Clinton described in his opening speech at the event, the Clinton Global Initiative has become a year-round event, with full-time employees who help donors and nonprofit groups find partners and shape programs throughout the year.  The meeting brings together people in business, government, and nonprofits to identify potential solutions to global problems and make commitments (of money, expertise, time, products, or human resources) to solving them.

Participants are poised today to announce 291 such new commitments and the number will likely grow in the next few days, Mr. Clinton said. He said that since the event started five years ago, 1,...

Former President Bill Clinton's annual philanthropy gathering has become a must-attend event for many leaders in philanthropy, business, and government, and this year is no different.

Scheduled speakers include President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chairs Bill and Melinda Gates; Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer; Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. 

Those speakers and many others will discuss issues including empowering girls and women, the role of for-profit microfinance organizations, expanding access to modern technology in poor countries, protecting the world's forests, and a range of other topics.

As in past years, many foundations, businesses, and donors are priming philanthropic commitments to be announced at the gathering. The Chronicle will be sharing information on new projects an...

Denver

To respond to the frustrations that many grant makers face in trying to give money overseas, the Council on Foundations is creating a new committee to develop suggestions for how to make global grant making easier, its president, Steve Gunderson, said on Sunday night.

Along with the European Foundation Centre and Wings (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support), the Council will focus on three areas: improving the legal and regulatory climate for international giving; developing models for working with nonprofit groups in other countries; and finding ways to work with governments and institutions like the United Nations. 

Currently, it takes foundations about twice as long to process an international grant as a domestic grant, said William White, president of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and a co-chair of the new effort. He talked about how the Patriot Act, with its ...

Denver

Gara LaMarche, president of Atlantic Philanthropies, began a session on social-justice philanthropy here today with a lighthearted nod to what he called the "not uncontroversial" nature of the term social justice. 

The conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck recently likened social justice to communism. Mr. LaMarche had this message for people he joked might share Mr. Beck's views: "I'm giving people who feel that way and thought they'd wandered into a different panel an opportunity to leave." 

But despite the beating the term "social justice" might be taking among conservative talk-show hosts, Mr. LaMarche said today was a "potent moment" for grant making devoted to promoting equality by creating structural change. 

Grant makers like Atlantic and the Ford Foundation are putting more money into social-justice grant making, he said, and groups like the Foundation Center are...

Denver

Foundations are not institutions set apart from society and its problems, and grant makers can and should be involved in the fight for a more just and equitable world, Gara LaMarche, president of Atlantic Philanthropies, and Benjamin Jealous, head of the NAACP, told young foundation officials at the closing session of the first conference of the group Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy.

Mr. LaMarche, president of Atlantic Philanthropies, spoke about how his years working for groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch were not so different from his time as a grant maker.

Mr. LaMarche said he was always reluctant to go into philanthropy because he saw it as a "cozy sinecure" detached from the world's problems. 

But he said grant makers have a set of tools to effect social change just like groups such as the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, and that in ...

Denver

In his opening speech at the annual Council on Foundations conference, Steve Gunderson, president of the association of grant makers, gave foundation officials a pat on the back for not cutting their grants too deeply during the recession and urged them to get ready for an economic recovery. 

Citing Foundation Center figures suggesting that grants dropped by only 8 percent in 2009—a far smaller percentage than the drop in foundations' assets—Mr. Gunderson said he thought history would look back favorably on how grant makers responded to the recession.   

"I believe this sector met that test," he said. 

"I have yet to meet a foundation that didn't make extra efforts to maintain their grant making," said Mr. Gunderson. "You cut staff. ... Some of you even cut your membership dues and your conference attendance, but we won't go there." 

Today, the stock market is up about 70...