Can foundations prevent the growing populist sentiment in America from turning on them?

Several philanthropy experts have predicted that Tea Party activists and others who are staunchly antigovernment—and in some sense anti-institution—will eventually take aim at big grant makers that are perceived as elitist.

William A. Schambra, director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, and Joel Orosz, a professor of philanthropy at Grand Valley State University, have said the current political environment reminds them of the 1950s and 1960s when lawmakers grew suspicious of foundations and imposed new regulations on them.

"Whenever the populist gale is blowing in America, sooner or later it blows ill for the world of philanthropy," Mr. Schambra wrote in a Chronicle of Philanthropy opinion article.

Now in a Huffington Post article, Jane Wales, a vice president at the Aspen...

A top senator's scrutiny of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America is damaging the image of the nonprofit world and is a sign of an unfair expection that nonprofit leaders earn less than their for-profit peers, says a charity expert.

Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable, writes a scathing article about Sen. Charles Grassley, who is one of four senators asking the Boys & Girls Clubs to provide details about what it spends on executive compensation, lobbying, travel, and other items.

(Read The Chronicle's article about the scrutiny and the charity's response.)

On his Harvard Business Review blog, Mr. Pallotta says Mr. Grassley's public questions about how much the charity's chief executive earns are an "underserved attack" that has "created what will likely now be a 10-year uphill public-relations battle."

He says that the Iowa Republican's comments demonstrate a double standard between...

Is Disney's effort to promote volunteerism an innovative way to get people to donate time or is it tantamount to bribery?

Since the start of this year, the Disney company has offered free admission to anyone who volunteered with organizations connected with the HandsOn Network, a national coalition of volunteer centers and charities. The effort was bolstered by television ads featuring the Muppets.

The Give a Day, Get a Disney Day program produced a surge in participants, and in less than three months the company reached its goal of spurring 1 million people to volunteer.

Charity leaders and others applaud the effort.

"The innovative nature of this program has exponentially increased our capacity to both invite and excite people about volunteerism," says Michelle Nunn, co-founder of HandsOn Network, in a press statement. She says many of the participants were first-time volunteers.

...

The richest man in the world is no longer American, but Mexican, a sign of the developing world's wealth -- and potentially foreshadowing a shift in philanthropy.

With $53.5-billion, the Mexican telecommunications investor Carlos Slim Helu edged out Bill Gates as the top billionaire, says Forbes magazine. It also notes that Brazil, Russia, and Turkey experienced significant growth in the number of superwealthy.

While America is still home to the largest number of billionaires (403), the growing personal assets in other places could lead to big giving, philanthropy experts told The Chronicle in a recent article. They predicted India, China, and Brazil could have a boom in splashy charitable donations in the near future.

The potential philanthropy windfall is one reason fund raisers at large American charities are seeking more money from donors aboard, according to a Chronicle article.

Should Jewish philanthropy focus more on helping needy Jewish people?

Jack Wertheimer, a history professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, raises this question in an opinion article in Commentary magazine.

"At a time when Jewish communal institutions are failing to attend to the needs of Jews at home and abroad, the hot trend in Jewish philanthropic and organizational circles, incredibly, is to channel ever more of their resources to nonsectarian causes," he writes.

In particular, he criticizes Repair the World, an organization started last year to encourage young Jews to help others, though not specifically other Jews. 

"No one in a position of responsibility in Jewish organizational life has suggested that Jews should be indifferent to the plight of their fellow human beings, and all the evidence suggests that American Jews engage actively in civic and philanthropic activities,...

The Huffington Post's philanthropy reporting is under fire for working with a fund-raising company to produce content, a relationship some journalism experts fear might cause ethical problems.

In October, the online newspaper started Impact, a section dedicated to promoting charitable causes and issues. But while the reporting carries the Huffington Post name, the content is produced by CauseCast, a company that helps charities raise money. The two organizations share advertising revenue raised by Impact.

The Nieman Journalism Lab, a blog of Harvard University's Neiman Foundation, first raised questions about the relationship. While noting that publishers are desperately looking for new revenue models, the Huffington Post partnership is troubling, writes Laura McGann, an assistant editor with Neiman.

"By blurring the line between advertising and content, it also raises questions about...

Is the Obama administration pushing a bad way to measure charity efforts or is it injecting much needed rigior into such evaluations?

Two nonprofit experts disagree about the administration's Social Innovation Fund and its focus on supporting effective nonprofit programs.

In an opinion article in The Chronicle, Katya Fels Smith, founder of the Full Frame Institute, a nonprofit organization that works with innovative social-service charities, questions the fund's approach, especially it's emphasis on so-called experimental-design studies.

Such scientific studies seek to examine the cause-and-effect relationship between grant making and social outcomes. For example, a study of drug treatment would compare people who received aid to an equivalent group of people who didn't.

But Ms. Smith says this is unrealistic.

"Such studies require a very narrow definition of who is being studied, and...

• To improve the oversight and coordination of aid groups working in Haiti, all donations should be sent to a pooled fund that would be controlled by the Haitian government, writes Paul Collier, an economics professor at Oxford University and a former special adviser on Haiti for the United Nations. On a Foreign Policy magazine blog, he says that before the earthquake struck, charities provided much of the health care and education in the country, "yet they have been accountable neither to users nor funders."
• Creating better teachers is key to improving America's public-school system, writes Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an opinion article in The Washington Post. She says federal and state governments, school districts, and teachers are starting "to coalesce around the goal of having an effective teacher in every classroom."
• As states decide how...

Arts managers across the country apparently are fuming about advice offered by Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

On the Huffington Post, Mr. Kaiser writes that he has been scolded by his peers for saying that theaters, orchestras, and other arts groups should not cut programs or marketing due to the tough economic climate.

"One arts leader accused me publicly of living in a parallel universe," he says. When the angry executive was forced to trim his program budget, "he was not amused that his artists kept saying, 'Michael Kaiser says this, Michael Kaiser says that.'"

Mr. Kaiser says he is sympatheic to the concerns. "For the record, I do believe there are times when programming and marketing must be sacrificed, but I believe this should be a last resort, not a first resort," he writes. "I prefer to cut every other cost imaginable, as my...

The Corporation for National and Community Service issued its final notice this week on how it plans to spend the Social Innovation Fund, or SIF as insiders call it. And blogs are abuzz with the potential of the new program.

The corporation will provide funds to grant-making organizations, which in turn will award annual money to nonprofit groups that have shown promise in areas of economic opportunity, youth development, and healthy living.

With its focus on supporting groups that can prove their effectiveness and share ideas, "the SIF has the potential to transform how our nation tackles social challenges," writes the corporation's board chair, Stephen Goldsmith, on the White House blog.

Before issuing the final guidelines for how to apply, the corporation received more than 200 comments.

Nathaniel Whittemore, the founder of Assetmap, a San Francisco group, says the agency did a...