The Future Leaders in Philanthropy blog has just concluded a series it’s been publishing about the pluses and minuses of graduate degrees in business and in public administration.

In its last interview, Alison Urkowitz, an associate director of research programs at the Michael J. Fox Foundation, explains why she chose a degree in public administration to help her make the leap from advertising to the foundation world.

“I decided on an MPA over an MBA because I felt it covered much of the same information, but was geared toward the nonprofit sector, which is where my interests laid,” says Ms. Urkowitz, who graduated from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. “ I felt my program, in particular, forced me to learn an appropriate amount of finance, economics, statistics, policy, etc, all providing a great background for entering the nonprofit world as an employee and ...

Most Americans have grown comfortable giving online. But how do they know which Web site to use?

Lucy Bernholz, writing on Philanthropy 2173, suggests that it might be time for online marketplaces — such as GlobalGiving, DonorsChoose, Network for Good, and Kiva, among many others — to create a one-stop directory for such sites.

She writes: “Just as foundations of all kinds began organizing themselves a few decades back, it is probably time that these online marketplaces start doing the same. Why? Same reasons the foundations did – public awareness, regulatory input, joint research, shared interests in developments regarding technological/infrastructure/charitable law.”

Ms. Bernholz also notes an absence of Web sites that allow donors to contribute to the arts and the environment. She asks readers to help her out. Are there any online sites that channel donations to a broad array...

“Inside the painfully polite, frequently conservative world of mainstream U.S. philanthropy, the term ‘social justice philanthropy’ often suggests an unwholesome radicalism in one’s approach to grant making,” writes Albert Ruesga on his blog White Courtesy Telephone.

Why is the world of philanthropy so shaken by the idea of social justice?

Mr. Ruesga, vice president of programs and communications at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, examines what he sees as the biggest objections foundations give for not supporting social-justice work.

For starters, he says that too many foundation leaders think their trustees wouldn’t approve of social-justice grant making. But Mr. Ruesga isn’t convinced. “Remove the rhetoric, the partisanship, the unpleasant associations, and you’re left with an idea—justice as fairness—that all good people can embrace,” he says.

Among his other...

The federal government needs to create a high-level committee to make sure small, community-based charities can get the information and resources they need to provide disaster relief, Tony Pipa, of Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, “ writes on his blog.

That’s one of the recommendations of a new report by the Aspen Institute, Mobilizing Change: 10 Nonprofit Policy Proposals to Strengthen U.S. Communities.

Mr. Pipa, who helped to edit the report, says the proposal stemmed from the experiences of charities such as Mercy Corps and International Rescue Committee after Hurricane Katrina.

Many of those groups, which were responding to a domestic emergency for the first time, were surprised to learn that no agency was playing the role that the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs undertakes after overseas disasters.

(See The...

Nonprofit groups in Miami, San Diego, and Houston are in better shape financially than charities in other American. cities, according to a new study by Charity Navigator.

The study, highlighted on the watchdog group’s blog, also found that charities in Denver spend the least on programs, groups in New York pay their chief executive officers the most, and charities in Miami are growing the fastest.

Charity Navigator’s studies often draw a lot of debate. Tell us what you think. Is it an accurate picture of what is going on in your city?

The announcement by Facebook last week that its Causes application has raised $2.5-million in its first year drew disappointment in some quarters.

Writing on the blog TechCrunch, some posters say that figure is encouraging, particularly given that most Facebook users are young and don’t have much disposable income. But other comments suggest that $2.5-million is a tiny number for a site that has 12 million users.

Adam Hyman points out on TechCrunch that the $2.5-million total works out to being only $0.21 per user. “How can anyone call this a success?” he asks.

A blogger who identified himself simply as “FT” adds that Facebook receives a portion of the money raised by the application, so smart donors would be better off contributing to the charity directly.

Lael writes that Facebook’s causes doesn’t provide users with enough of an incentive to donate. “Most of the people I...

Tom Durso, writing at the 501cFiles, is worried that the mounds of criticism Ivy League institutions’ multibillion-dollar endowments have attracted recently could hurt other, needier colleges.

Mr. Durso responds to an opinion piece by Carroll Bogert, a Harvard alumna and associate director of Human Rights Watch, in The New York Times.

Ms. Bogert criticizes Harvard for continuing to press alumni for donations even as its $35-billion endowment is expected to rise to $100-billion in a decade. “Why do all those clever classmates of mine continue to invest their money in an institution with such a lack of imagination about how to deploy its resources?,” she asks.

Says Mr. Durso: “Bogert’s point is well taken, but I fear she may be throwing the baby out with the bath water.” Harvard, Princeton, and similar universities do benefit from alumni contributions that sit in endowments “never...

Kelly Kleiman, a lawyer and journalist who blogs as The Nonprofiteer, says she knows she’s “supposed to be horrified” by a New York Times’ article yesterday describing a series of court rulings revoking charities’ tax-exempt status. But instead, she thinks the challenges to charities’ status are long overdue.

Ms. Kleiman thinks a clamping down on charities’ tax-exempt status might prompt a “long-overdue discussion about who’s actually supposed to be providing health care and services for veterans and the developmentally disabled and the homeless and the hungry and everybody else we’ve been pretending can be served by private charity.”

“If in fact nonprofits are doing nothing but taking government payments and providing services — and if in fact there are for-profit businesses doing exactly the same thing but paying taxes for it — then the nonprofits should be deprived of their tax-...

“I am an eyewitness to a terrible violation of human rights directed at victims of Cyclone Nargis by their own military government,” writes an aid worker, upon returning from Myanmar, on the Reuters AlertNet blog.

The blogger, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing his charity’s operations, describes how his charity was blocked from bringing aid to people in the cyclone-devastated Irrawady Delta. “We were told we could give the supplies to the military and they would distribute them for us,” he recounts. “After hearing stories of where military aid was going this was not an option.”

Aid groups are having to be creative. Some are hiring local teams to distribute aid, and training them on the spot. But the blogger says he’s worried that the supplies are being denied to members of the country’s oppressed ethnic Karen people.

“Our worker told me he had spoken to...

The Myanmar government is still refusing to allow foreign aid workers into the cyclone-devastated country. Doesn’t the world have a responsibility to deliver aid? And couldn’t aid groups drop supplies into the country?

Ruth Gidley, a former aid worker and journalist, asks those questions on the AlertNet blog. But she says there are some good reasons why air drops have so far been ruled out.

“Unless there’s someone to meet the aid and organize its distribution, it end ups with the ones who are most able to scramble and fight for it,” she says. “That’s why reputable aid agencies don’t throw aid out of the back of trucks, either.”

Aid drops are also expensive. And humanitarian organizations are quick to point out that they wouldn’t work in Myanmar without the government’s permission.

But are aid drops better than nothing?

“If it’s an emergency, and people are at risk of...