Why do people get so offended by criticism of international aid?

Tori Hogan, a filmmaker who recently made a documentary about the effectiveness of overseas development projects, asks this question and writes that two sets of people — donors, especially ones who contribute small amounts of money, and aid workers — are particularly defensive.

On Social Edge, a Web site operated by the Skoll Foundation, she says that donors are “desperately trying to convince themselves that their good intentions and willingness to want to help is enough,” while aid workers feel like her film is “questioning the validity of their life’s work.”

She argues that foreign assistance programs need to foster a “culture of critical reflection” to improve, but aid recipients themselves may have to build such an effort.

To be sure, there appears to be growing number of people and programs trying to...

Who benefits from grant making?

A seemingly simple question, but a recent study on the subject has triggered a variety of responses, with vastly different conclusions.

This month the Philanthropic Collaborative, a Washington nonprofit coalition, released a report that estimated that two out of every three grant dollars to health causes helps the poor and disadvantaged populations.

The report sought in part to repudiate the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a foundation watchdog that is pushing grant makers to give more to marginalized people. The committee, in Washington, has said that one out of three grant dollars to all causes helps under-served populations.

To some, the report reveals a left-wing conspiracy to convince Congress to regulate foundations, a move that would help “destroy de Tocquevillian America,” as Peter Roff, a conservative columnist, writes ...

The Rev. Brad R. Braxton, senior pastor of Riverside Church, in New York, resigned this week after less than a year on the job, in part because of a controversy about his compensation, reports the City Room, a New York Times blog.

The church fight is the latest in a series of incidents in which the public has expressed concern about a nonprofit leader’s pay; some charity experts expect such scrutiny to grow during the recession.

The Rev. Braxton was appointed in September to lead the church, but some congregants objected to his annual compensation of $600,000, including a $250,000 salary and a housing allowance. According to experts on American churches, the compensation was well above average but within the range for senior leaders of similar-size churches in other big cities, writes Times reporter Paul Vitello.

To be sure, the reverend’s pay was only part of the dispute, with...

While many charities proudly announce when they’ve won a government contract or grant, almost none publicly discuss why an attempted bid failed. On its blog, Sunlight Labs has done just that.

Sunlight Labs is run by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington nonprofit group, and uses technology to push government officials and members of Congress to be more public about their work. (Read The Chronicle’s article about the Sunlight Foundation.)

In June Sunlight said it would try a radical idea: With help from independent Web developers and others, it would draft an application to operate Recovery.org, the federal government’s Web site used to track economic-stimulus money.

But the project did not work, writes Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs. Among the problems: Sunlight didn’t understand the terminology used in federal contracts.

On the blog, Mr. Johnson describes the...

Philanthropy experts are debating the nature of charitable dollars — are they public or private funds?

The discussion is not new, but has become more important lately as it is key to the question of how the government should regulate foundations and whether it should force them to give more to the poor and other disadvantaged populations.

The Philanthropy Roundtable, a Washington association of grant makers, released this month a new report that attacks the idea that philanthropy is public money because donors receive a tax deduction and grant makers are tax-exempt.

“The ‘public-money’ claim is not well founded in legal authority,” says the report, How Public is Private Philanthropy: Separating Myth from Reality. The report, which was the subject of a recent discussion at the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, goes on to say about the tax benefits, “There is no ...

Recent recommendations on good grant making by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy have divided foundation leaders, but there are key points the nonprofit world seems to agree on — and can do something about, says the Alliance for Justice.

On the Washington group’s blog, Sue Hoechstetter, the organization’s senior adviser for foundation advocacy, says both supporters and critics of the committee would seem to agree on its recommendations that foundations increase advocacy work and provide more operating support for charities.

And where there is common ground, she hopes that philanthropic leaders will work together to make changes.

For example, she suggests, “With much of the nonprofit sector experiencing economic crises, and general support funding on the decrease, the Philanthropy Roundtable and Council on Foundations could together develop a strategic campaign ...

As people mourn the death of the pop star Michael Jackson, fans, the news media, and others are discussing his charitable work, which some say paved the way for the current surge in celebrity philanthropy.

The entertainer supported dozens of charities during his life, including USA for Africa, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. He reportedly was listed in the 2000 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Charities Supported by a Pop Star.” The number was 39.

As a humanitarian, he is perhaps best know for “We Are the World,” the 1985 song he wrote with Lionel Richie that raised millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa. To honor the King of Pop’s philanthropy, some fans and small companies have pledged to make donations to his favorite charities.

Yet as with the rest of his life, Mr. Jackson occasionally triggered...

As the nonprofit world gears up for the premiere of “The Philanthropist,” Steve Gunderson, chief executive of the Council on Foundations, finds the show and the lead character entertaining, but not very based in reality.

“It’s great entertainment. His life is exciting. His solutions arrive in 60 minutes. And he always succeeds,” he writes in a press statement about the show “I wish philanthropy was really that fun and that easy.”

Real charitable giving, he counters, requires rigorous “due diligence” for both the foundation and grant seeker and “long hours in meticulous preparation, months or years to implement solutions and thoughtful, ongoing metrics to track results.”

As one of the members of the council’s board of directors told Mr. Gunderson, The Philanthropist is to charitable giving as The Pink Panther is to police work.

“The show is a romanticized, action/adventure...

Is the popcorn ready? Beer and soda chilling? And may be a few rotten tomatoes on hand to throw at the television screen? Then you’re ready for tonight’s debut of “The Philanthropist.”

The new drama about an erstwhile do-gooder definitely has the nonprofit world talking; Hispanics in Philanthropy, for instance, is organizing viewing parties across the country to watch the premiere tonight at 10 pm Eastern time on NBC.

Reviews of the show so far are pretty mixed.

The New York Times said the show is “unusual and exhilarating.” But USA Today called it a “well-acted, well-intentioned, incredibly preposterous show that would struggle even if it were in step with the times, rather than marching to its own prosperous drummer.”

Even Bobby Sager, a philanthropist whose stories provided the genesis of the show, called the show’s main character a “jerk.” (Read The Chronicle’s profile of ...

A brochure for an African tour has sparked a debate about a well-known international aid program and how Westerners view the poor.

The dust-up began on The Huffington Post when Magatte Wade, an African entrepreneur, criticized a Rwandan project that offers tours of a Millennium Villages site, an antipoverty effort developed by Jeff Sachs, an economist at Columbia University.

Ms. Wade said a brochure advertising the tour patronized Africans and was evidence that Mr. Sachs’s development program was misguided.

William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University and a frequent critic of Mr. Sachs, added fuel to the fire on his Aid Watch blog, asking the question: “Should starving people be tourist attractions?”

Millennium Villages and the tour company have fired back.

The director of Eos Visions, which help set up the tour, writes in a response that that the...