“The line between an exempt charity and a commercial business has grown ever murkier in our society,” writes John D. Colombo, a University of Illinois Law professor, on the Nonprofit Law Prof blog.

He cites three recent news articles on tax-exemption conflicts or legal challenges under way across the country:

• A 70-acre campground in Georgia described as a “worship site,” though it sports signs reading ‘No Trespassing — Little River Hunt Club.’

• A charity arts venue in Iowa (complete with liquor license) that area bar and club owners say unfairly competes with them when booking and paying performers.

• A 160-room oceanfront property in New Jersey that an order of nuns says is used for religious retreats.

“So when, exactly, is an organization an exempt charity or a hunt club, or a bar with live entertainment, or an ocean vacation spot?” Mr. Colombo asks. “If the legendary...

Thinking of starting a charity?

Brendan Baker, a Canadian engineer who has logged significant time in Africa working for Engineers Without Borders (an international charity that assists with engineering projects in the developing world), has some advice. On his blog Cashewman he recommends that to avoid creating more “useless” charities, people interested in starting new nonprofit groups ask themselves three questions first:

• Do I want to actually change things or just make myself feel good?

• What are the root problems?

• Is somebody already doing this better?

Mr. Baker (rather harshly) applies his three questions rule to Pixel Equality, a start-up charity in New York that provides free video games to young people who can’t afford them. He is dubious of the undertaking from the get-go: “You know what might help more?” Mr. Baker writes. “Exposing kids to actual,...

Panhandlers are and all-too-common sight in American cities—self-described homeless individuals clutching cardboard-sign pleas for money on median strips and busy street corners. But how much do people give to these folks?

In Miami the answer might be more than $40-million a year, based on a survey of citizen giving commissioned by the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, an advocacy group.

Some charity leaders expressed skepticism of the findings. The Miami Herald quoted the founder of a homelessness assistance group calling the figure “nuts” and “ridiculous” and saying there should be no homeless in the city at all if that many millions were changing hands.

The purpose of the survey was build municipal support for developing ways to make it easier for Miamians to give spare change to social-service charities rather than panhandlers.

“Like many cities across the country, local of...

What happens when you eat a dead tarantula on TV and a charity refuses your offer to share some of the cash you earn for such a stunt?

This unlikely scenario happened to Patti Blagojevich, wife of Rod Blagojevich, the impeached ex-governor of Illinois now facing corruption charges. She is a contestant on NBC’s “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here,” a reality show filmed in the Costa Rican jungle.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Ms. Blagojevich wanted to endure the program’s hardships and humiliations in part to raise money for the Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation, in Chicago, but that the charity declined to accept her donation.

“We want to be a respectable organization and not hurt any of the people that support us and that we work with,” a charity spokeswoman told the newspaper.

(The foundation is affiliated with Children’s Memorial Hospital, a Chicago...

Cause marketing may be defined as mutually beneficial collaborations between a for-profit business and a charity. The Product Red campaign, for example, has raised nearly $60-million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria thanks to consumers buying select “red-branded” items from companies like Gap and Apple that include a donation as part of the purchase price.

Angela M. Eikenberry, assistant professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, casts a jaundiced eye on what she also calls “consumption philanthropy.” Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, she says such schemes have “hidden costs” that make them “unsuited to create real social change” and that they “replace virtuous action with mindless buying.”

Ms. Eikenberry writes that such philanthropy is based on “individual market transactions” which distract...

The recession has brought a variety of ills to the nonprofit world, and one that may be going overlooked is an increase in fraud — theft, embezzlement, and other financial skullduggery.

“Desperate employees and board members are doing desperate things at an alarming rate,” writes Gary Snyder, a nonprofit consultant, on the “Keeping a Close Eye” blog run by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group in Washington.

Mr. Synder runs the Nonprofit Imperative, an online newsletter that tracks charity fraud, and he reports that March of this year saw the “largest amount of misdeeds ever”—a 63-percent increase in instances of fraud at nonprofit groups over March 2008. (See a Chronicle article on how charities can deal with fraud problems.)

Those findings appear consistent with the broader trends reported by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a trade ...

A year ago an earthquake that killed over 85,000 people hit China’s Sichuan Province. The devastation elicited an unprecedented philanthropic response within China with more than $10-billion donated and some 100,000 volunteers pitching in to help.

Has this giving been sustained and has Chinese philanthropy been bolstered by the tragedy?

The answers appear to be mixed, according to a recent Public Radio International program that examined those issues.

Philanthropic donations within China for the first quarter of this year were only a fraction of the giving recorded in the same period a year earlier—and that was before the earthquake. The economic downturn can be blamed for much of this but the program says, “another reason could be skepticism about how the earthquake money was spent.”

Volunteerism does appear to be stronger now, the program reports, as the Olympic Games in...

Are you satisfied with your charity’s Web site? Is it as simple to use, informative, and polished-looking as it could be?

If you answered “yes”, you may want to think again.

The average charity Web site scored only 73 out of 100 on a recent survey of more than 2,000 visitors to nonprofit-run Web sites. That’s a low C, gradewise, and lower than government Web sites scored on the survey. Online banking sites scored 10 points higher.

The “Trends in Constituent Satisfaction with Nonprofit Websites” survey, conducted by ForeSee Results, in Ann Arbor, Mich., found two key problems with charity Web sites: How they work and the images they present of the organization.

Making Web-site visitors happier could significantly increase donations, the report’s findings suggest. Nearly 50 percent of site visitors who rate themselves as “highly satisfied” with a charity Web site are more likely ...

The Domino’s pizza chain recently got in trouble when employees posted a “prank” video on YouTube showing workers doing all kinds of disgusting things with pizza ingredients. The clip spread fast, becoming a public-relations nightmare for the pizza chain.

What if something like this happened to your organization? Some past or present employee or volunteer places something on the Web that casts your charity in a bad light?

Katya Andresen, vice president of marketing for Network for Good, provides advice on how to head off or heal potentially damaging exposure on the Web on her Getting to the Point blog.

First, she advices to “be listening for it” through tools like Google alerts, which can track your group’s name as it appears on the Internet, and Tweetbeep which does a similar function on Twitter.

If something troubling does surface, figure out who’s behind it. “Is this one...

Need an excuse to create a pithy-but-impassioned charitable appeal? How about the chance to attract a $100,000 donation?

Hugh Jackman, the Australian actor, recently put this pledge out on the Twitter Web site: “I will donate 100K to one individual’s favorite nonprofit organization. Of course, you must convince me why by using 140 characters or less.”

Readers are asked to “tweet” their appeals on the Twitter site, where 140 characters is the limit for all communications entered. Appeals have already come in for a diverse group of charities, including Habitat for Humanity, a dance group in Iowa, and an organization that fights anti-gay bullying in schools.

Though an end date for this “tweet for a cause” contest has not been named, Mr. Jackman has suggested it could be April 24

“Your suggestions have been informative, touching and inspiring,” Mr. Jackman wrote as a follow- up....