• Partnerships between individual donors and foundations — the financier Warren Buffett’s gift to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation being the most obvious example — can present opportunities for both parties, writes Padriac Brick on the New Philanthropy Capital blog. New Philanthropy Capital, a London charity that advises donors on their giving, recently produced a report on the subject.

• Bill Shore, executive director of the nonprofit group Share Our Strength, says on a Washington Post blog that innovative nonprofit leaders such as Teach for America’s Wendy Kopp and Harlem Children’s Zone’s Geoffrey Canada might just become “the next generation of political giants.”

• Matthew Bishop, an editor with The Economist and author of a book about philanthropy, has a piece on the magazine’s Web site about the growing interest in “social capital markets” — markets that promote...

• Mike Burns, a consultant to nonprofit groups, examines the brouhaha over reports of the $1-million salary of Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum on Nonprofit Board Crisis.

• Beth Kanter, an expert on nonprofit groups and social media, analyzes foundations that use the Web site Twitter.

• Kivi Leroux Miller, a nonprofit marketing consultant, highlights lessons for nonprofit groups outlined in the new book Change Agents.

• Lucy Bernholz, a consultant to foundations and donors, proposes a new effort to pull together all the policies and regulations that guide the nonprofit world.

• The Chronicle’s Prospecting blog explains why fund raisers should re-examine the wealth profiles of their donors in light of the recession.

Are you participating in President Obama’s summer service campaign? Two college students are hoping you’ll consider recording your experiences through a new social-networking site.

Chris Golden and Nick Troiano started the United We Serve networking site to help people taking part in the White House effort share ideas and learn from each other’s volunteer experiences.

Volunteers can post photographs, videos, stories, and lessons from their activities. They might want to use the site to seek ideas for volunteer projects, provide ideas to people interested in starting similar efforts in other parts of the country, and encourage their friends to volunteer, said Mr. Golden.

The Web site has no affiliation with the White House campaign, but Mr. Golden said he had been in touch with the administration and was hopeful that the Corporation for National and Community Service would agree ...

David F. Swenson, the chief investment officer of Yale University’s endowment, says most endowments are on a fruitless search for market-beating returns and should abandon active management in favor of passive investments like index funds.

In an interview with Pro Publica, a nonprofit journalism site, Mr. Swenson says he is sticking with the diverse collection of actively managed equity-like investments that earned Yale such strong returns during the decade that ended last June. Yale earned 16.3 percent per year over that period, trouncing the returns provided by U.S. stocks by roughly 13 percentage points and raising the value of its endowment to $23-billion.

But since then, Mr. Swenson says, Yale’s endowment has dropped by roughly 25 percent.

The Yale model, spelled out in Mr. Swenson’s 2000 book, Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional...

Jack Siegel, writing at Charity Governance, has reviewed the 163-page list of clients of Bernard L. Madoff released by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and compiled his own list of what appear to be the charities, foundations, and charitable trusts that lost money in the scandal.

“It appears that the list is limited to those who invested directly with Madoff,” writes Mr. Siegel. “A number of feeder funds are listed. We know that there are charities invested with those funds that are not included on the list released today.”

Mr. Madoff reportedly admitted in December that his investment-management business was “a giant Ponzi scheme” that would cost investors as much as $50-billion.

Join us this today at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time for an online discussion about operating costs — and how charities can find money to pay for them.

Paul Shoemaker, head of Social Venture Partners Seattle, will offer perspectives on what his organization has learned as it provides money and advice to help charities improve their management.

Our online discussions are open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers. You may start posing your questions now.

Calling all best-practice stakeholders: Are you moving forward with a paradigm shift and taking the initiative with consensus building because wearing different hats is part of your core competency?

If that made you laugh, then Nonprofit Buzzword Bingo may be just the relief you need when you go into your next meeting.

Kivi Leroux Miller, president of the Nonprofit Marketing Guide, an online resource for charities run by the EcoScribe communications, a marketing firm in Lexington, North Carolina, developed the game as a way to poke fun at “nonprofit-speak.”

Ms. Miller made it easy to print cards from her site that have charity jargon words and expressions, such as “consensus building” and “key players” and “facilitate” in place of the usual numbers on a bingo card. Players take the cards into a meeting and mark off a square for each buzzword uttered. Mark off five in a row and...

Should a nonprofit news venture be subsidizing the reporting of a for-profit organizations?

That question is provoking lively debate in news and nonprofit circles after The Miami Herald published an opinion article that criticizes the new nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which focuses on producing investigative journalism.

ProPublica was created with a pledge of $30-million over the next three years from Herbert and Marion Sandler, The Chronicle reported last fall.

Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, wrote in the Herald that ProPublica’s recent collaboration with CBS News’ 60 Minutes on a broadcast about the Arab language news network Al-Hurra, amounted to ProPublica’s subsidizing “the cost of a segment for 60 Minutes, the most financially successful news show in the history of U.S. television.”

Mr. Wasserman also...

The journalist Bob Woodward has come under criticism by Harper’s Magazine for agreeing to accept generous public-speaking fees from banking and financial organizations for his private foundation.

Mr. Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal as a journalist for The Washington Post, had previously been critical of reporters who accept money for public speaking, saying in a 1996 interview, “I don’t think it helps their reputation.”

But Ken Silverstein, Washington editor of the magazine, writes on the magazine’s Web site that Mr. Woodward has performed paid speeches for financial companies such as Countrywide Financial, which has come under scrutiny for its role in the subprime meltdown.

Mr. Woodward said in the 1996 interview that he donates any money he earns from public speaking to charity, most notably the Woodward Walsh Foundation, a private...

A conservative legal group’s effort to encourage pastors to preach about election candidates to test federal tax law is drawing plenty of critical questions.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Alliance Defense Fund, hopes a court case will result from this defiance of tax rules, which bar churches from engaging in partisan politics, and that the restrictions will be struck down by the courts.

Not everybody agrees the prohibitions on politicking need to be challenged.

“Responsible ministers understand that the First Amendment does as much or more to protect their congregations than it does to muffle their voice,” writes Daniel Schultz, a minister in the United Church of Christ, on his blog Street Prophets.

Tom Durso, author of the 501c3Files, is not as sure.

“Supporters of the law say it helps to ensure separation of church and state, and while I am a hearty advocate ...