Dear Malcolm Gladwell: The nonprofit technology world is not very happy with you.

Mr. Gladwell's article in this week's New Yorker magazine, criticizing the hype about social media's ability to stir social movements, is drawing fire from nonprofit technology experts, among others.

The primary gripe against Mr. Gladwell, left, an author of several best-selling books, centers on his argument that Facebook, Twitter, and other online tools foster "weak" ties among people, which he says are not the types of relationships upon which social activism depends. For example, he writes, the lunch-counter sit-ins that helped foster the civil-rights movement of the 1960s were built on "strong" ties, true friendships, which are necessary if one is to engage in high-risk activism of the sort required of civil-rights leaders.

Allison Fine, a social-media expert and Chronicle contributor, disagrees...

Donors crave more and better information about charities, information that will help them make smarter decisions about which groups they support.

That assumption has driven a lot of the discussion about philanthropy in recent years, writes Cynthia Gibson, a senior vice president at the Philanthropic Initiative, on the organization's blog and in the Nonprofit Quarterly. And she says that idea seems to be behind recent grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to two philanthropy consulting groups, to help them develop tools that will enable donors to give more intelligently.

But do donors really want more information?, Ms. Gibson asks. And even if good data existed on nonprofits' impact, would donors really use it to decide how to channel their charity?

Ms. Gibson and her co-author, William Dietel, former president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, suggest that data may not have the...

This Sunday's New York Times magazine has an article about Plumpy'nut, a paste made of peanuts that has been credited with significantly reducing death rates during famines in Africa.

Anderson Cooper, in a "60 Minutes" segment, has compared the paste to penicillin, saying it "may just be the most important advance ever" in fighting childhood malnutrition. Plumpy'nut has gotten lots of raves from aid workers, too, who are using it in their programs. 

But the Times article draws attention to a debate about a patent for Plumpy'nut held by the French company Nutriset, which first produced and sold the paste. Plumpy'nut is relatively expensive ($60 per child for a two-month supply), and critics contend that, as a lifesaving product that some describe as essentially fortified peanut butter, it shouldn't face the same restrictions about who can make it.

The debate resembles arguments over...

The Giving Pledge keeps giving—as a source of inspiration for philanthropy bloggers, journalists, and commentators.

The Giving Pledge is the effort by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage other rich people to give at least half their money away. So far, they've succeeded in convincing 40 rich people and families to take the pledge.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Dennis says the Gateses and Mr. Buffett aren't likely to have anywhere near the positive impact in their philanthropy as they've had in their business lives. Ms. Dennis, president of the Searle Freedom Trust, a nonprofit group that promotes free-market policies, asks readers to "think for a moment: Can you point to a single charitable accomplishment that has been as transformative as, say, the cellphone or the birth-control pill?"

Ms. Dennis also wonders why businesspeople feel they have a...

Richard Marker, an adviser to donors and a professor at New York University's Center on Philanthropy, sees lessons for philanthropy in the furor over the Islamic center and mosque slated to be built two blocks from the former World Trade Center site.

Mr. Marker says that misunderstandings about the project have fueled its unpopularity. And just because the center seems to be unpopular with many Americans, he says, doesn't mean it shouldn't be built.

Philanthropy, too, needs to be careful about caring too much about what's popular or what the majority thinks, he says. Efforts to push private philanthropy away from being so "private," by creating consensus measurements around societal needs, could be harmful, says Mr. Marker.

It might not seem very controversial to suggest that supporting soup kitchens is more important than supporting rich institutions such as Harvard University. But...

How does a magazine that lost $30-million last year turn its fortunes around?

That's the question Sidney Harman, electronics mogul and philanthropist, is facing after buying the venerable but decidedly unprofitable Newsweek magazine this week.

Rick Edmonds, a writer for the Poynter Institute, speculates that Mr. Harman may be considering turning the publication into a nonprofit group. There are a few signs that suggest this could be the case, Mr. Edmonds writes, including Mr. Harman's statement that he doesn't think of the Newsweek acquisition in "traditional business terms" and that he'll consider breaking even to be a victory.

In an interview with Mr. Edmonds, the Duke University professor James (Jay) Hamilton suggested that the idea of Newsweek going nonprofit isn't too far-fetched. But he said the magazine would need to tone down its coverage of frothy topics in favor of ones with...

Remember when Paul Light, the New York University scholar, predicted that 100,000 nonprofit groups would fail in the next two years? 

Well, nearly two years have passed since he made that statement in November 2008. Was Mr. Light right?

Bob Ottenhoff, chief executive of GuideStar, which collects information on charities, says that Mr. Light told him he has been haunted by his prediction ever since, because it's so hard to quantify. 

But Mr. Ottenhoff recently tried to get a sense of just how many charities have been forced to close because of the recession. He concludes that Mr. Light's prediction is "not only possible but probable."

Roughly 30,000 to 60,000 disappear from the IRS's files each year for unspecified reasons; presumably, most of them have gone out of business, says Mr. Ottenhoff.

In three surveys conducted by GuideStar last year, a consistent 8 to 10 percent of...

In recent days, WikiLeaks has drawn plenty of attention over its leaking of secret U.S. government documents on the war in Afghanistan. Some say the move endangers U.S. troops and Afghan informants, threatening U.S. national security.

Some observers of the nonprofit world are also accusing the charity, which provides a platform by which whistleblowers, journalists, and activists can anonymously share sensitive information with the public, of not being sufficiently transparent about its finances.

Jim Barnett, a writer and volunteer for the Nieman Journalism Lab, at Harvard University, says the group publishes next to nothing about how it is run on the "About Us" section of its Web site.

"I understand the need to protect whistleblowers and other sources," he says. "But when it comes to the group's finances, can't it cut out all the James Bond stuff?" 

Nonprofit journalism outlets such ...

SKS Microfinance, an Indian company that makes small loans to poor people, went public this week -- sparking a debate about whether its obligations as a publicly traded company will take it away from its antipoverty mission.

Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and widely recognized as the father of microfinance, told the Associated Press that SKS's IPO was "pushing microfinance in the loan-sharking direction." 

"It's not mission drift," he said. "It's endangering the whole mission."

Mr. Yunus said he was "repulsed" by the message he believes the microfinance company is sending -- that it can make money from the poor.

Matthew Bishop, co-author of the book Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World, has a different view. 

Mr. Bishop describes the experience of the for-profit Mexican microfinance institution Compartamos; he says it has almost certainly been able to...

Charities are all too familiar with being scrutinized over their administrative costs, but in a twist, a foundation in Britain is being asked to reduce its overhead.

John Copps, a head researcher at the British charity-evaluation group New Philanthropy Capital, describes on his organization's blog how the Big Lottery Fund -- Britain's largest grant maker -- is being instructed by the government to reduce its administrative costs from 8 percent to 5 percent.

While it may seem that the foundation shouldn't be immune to the cost-cutting going on elsewhere, Mr. Copps says, limiting the organization's administrative costs will likely cause harm.

Faced with less money and fewer employees, the foundation would likely make fewer small grants, start fewer new grant-making programs, and spend less on research and evaluation of programs. None of those moves would be good for nonprofit groups,...