Count Wired magazine among the growing legions that are piling criticism on charities and businesses that use direct mail.

The magazine, in its list of the 33 things that make us crazy, sticks junk mail in the same category of annoyances as credit cards and office copiers.

And the magazine throws charities under the bus as it airs its gripes about bulk mail.

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” it says. “You refinanced a mortgage or got a new credit card. You subscribed to a magazine or donated money to a charity.”

Such complaints are not new, but those who deal in direct-mail solicitations are increasingly contending with a backlash from those who believe the medium is bad for the environment.

“Consumers increasingly will be offended by wasteful packaging. It will affect their purchase decisions,” writes Tom Belford in The Agitator. “Apply that to ‘wasteful’ direct mail.”...

Google Grants — an effort by the Google search-engine company to donate online advertising to charities — today started a new blog that looks to help recipients take better advantage of the program.

The Google Grants Blog will discuss ways that nonprofit groups can make the most of the grant program.

Since creating Google Grants in 2003, Google has donated more than $200-million worth of advertising to more than 4,000 nonprofit organizations. The blog is expected to help the organization more effectively communicate with current and prospective grant recipients.

“With more and more people looking for information and joining the program all the time, we want to make sure that we can answer your questions quickly and give you what you need to make your group more successful,” the charity said in its inaugural post. “So we’re starting this blog as a place to read about the latest...

The founder of Kiva, a charity that encourages donors to make loans to needy entrepreneurs, took questions about his organization’s supply-demand dilemma during Tuesday’s weekly Chronicle online discussion.

And one of the most pointed questions came from Sean Stannard-Stocton, a financial consultant and the author of Tactical Philanthropy, who suggested that the organization change its lending terms to direct less money to the recipients of its small-business loans.

Mr. Stannard-Stockton suggested that Kiva should keep 10 percent of the pledged money as a contribution. That money would then be used to build a support staff that can identify more potential loan recipients.

During the discussion, Mr. Flannery dismissed the idea as being incongruent with Kiva’s mission.

“It’s really powerful to say ’100 percent of your loan goes to the entrepreneur’ and that’s something we are...

Are low-paid nonprofit workers to be lauded for their personal sacrifices? Or is such work actually selfish by nature?

Jeremy Gregg, development director at Central Dallas Ministries, writes on his blog, The Raiser’s Razor, blasts his peers for talking about how much more they could earn if they worked in the business world.

In what he terms “the selfishness of the supposed sacrifice of charity workers,” Mr. Gregg contends that it would be a sacrifice for him not to work for a charity, with its many non-monetary benefits, as opposed to the other way around.

“The opportunity costs [of working for a charity] are minimal in this regard when we look at the enormous gains we have made in other areas: seeing the impact of our work every day, feeling … ownership over our actions, reveling in the glorious triumphs of lives changed through a series of events that we set in motion … we...

What questions should the presidential candidates be asked about philanthropy?

Phil Cubeta, a financial and charitable-giving adviser, offers some ideas on Gift Hub with some help from a reader, Charles Bernard Maclean.

Among the suggestions:

• “Who is your role model for good giving and why?”

• “America is the most giving country in world. What will you do to continue and expand that ethic?”

• “What’s your stance on encouraging volunteering and dollar donation by all Americans?”

(For more on the intersection of the 2008 election and philanthropy, see The Chronicle‘s report on the Nonprofit Primary Project.)

What other questions would you like posed to the candidates about their views on philanthropy? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.

Google, famed for its free sushi lunches, nabbed the top spot on Fortune magazine’s annual 100 Best Companies to Work For list.

But the ranking of the country’s best worker-friendly employers wasn’t populated only by big companies. In fact, a larger-than-expected number of nonprofit organizations made Fortune’s cut, Tom Durso, a freelance writer, notes on the blog The 501c Files.

Most of the nonprofit organizations on the list are health-care groups, with Methodist Hospital System in Houston landing highest at No. 10.

Eleven other health-related charities — including the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Scripps Health in San Diego — are also on the list. And two other nonprofit organizations, the research firm Mitre in McLean, Va., and the Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Va., make the cut.

“It’s terrific to see as commercially focused a publication as Fortune...

Nonprofit experts often complain that they can’t get members of their boards to effectively raise money.

But the problem is usually more about the nonprofit organization’s leadership than it is about the motivations of its volunteer board members, writes the anonymous author of The Nonprofiteer.

“You’re not really authorized to critique the fund-raising incompetence of your doctor and lawyer board members until you can remove an appendix or argue a Supreme Court case without their assistance,” the author writes. “It’s their volunteer gig, but it’s your job, so the responsibility rests with you.”

To get board members to raise more money, the author says development officials and executives need to show them how it’s done — and set reasonable goals.

The author urges nonprofit leaders to ask board members to:

• Look at a list of current donors and identify those they know. After...

The veteran fund-raising consultant Tom Belford takes notice of a recent Pew Research Center report on trends in online video in his latest blog posting on The Agitator.

The report found that the number of people viewing video online increased by 45 percent from December 2006 to December 2007. Nearly half of all people, in fact, have watched online videos during the past year, according to the report.

Mr. Belford notes that much of that growth is coming from those in the boomer generation and from women.

And he advises nonprofit leaders to take note of these trends as they plan their fund-raising strategies.

“I’m prepared to speculate that if your core donor or member is college-educated and has broadband access … they’re a user … and your nonprofit had better be as well,” Mr. Belford writes.

Some groups are already using online video as a fund-raising tool. To learn more, re...

A new report on the fund-raising performance of nonprofit groups shows that charities are not earning as much money through direct-mail appeals as they have in years past.

And news of that report — by the Boston consulting company Target Analysis Group — has prompted many writers to urge nonprofit groups to take steps to adapt to changing trends.

In fact, some experts are writing obituaries for direct mail.

“The economics of direct mail are failing,” writes Mark Rovner, a fund-raising consultant on the blog Sea Change Strategies. “That is more or less an uncontroverted fact It costs more to mail, and fewer new donors come back with each mailing. This trend has been masked somewhat by higher average gifts by donors you already have, but sooner or later, the acquisition crisis is going to affect bottom lines. For some, it already has.”

Some organizations have been able to absorb ...

William Barron Hilton’s pledge to give $1.2-billion to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, in Reno, Nev., has drawn considerable news coverage in recent days — particularly because it means less money for heirs such as his granddaughter, the socialite Paris Hilton.

But the anonymous author of the blog Don’t Tell the Donor cautions that the donation isn’t simply taking money out of the hands of the rich and giving it to the poor.

The author writes that Mr. Hilton stands to receive a considerable tax break for his philanthropy.

She also notes that the Hilton Foundation — which already holds more than $3.1-billion in assets — doesn’t channel all of its money to the poor.

“Now, I guess the foundation does do some good work. But don’t forget, it also paid Steven Hilton more than a quarter million dollars in 2006,” the author writes. “The most recent IRS Form 990s for the Conrad Hilton...