Volunteers who serve on the boards of directors of nonprofit organizations often believe that they are helping the organization with their expertise.

But Albert Ruesga, the author of White Courtesy Telephone, writes that they are often mistaken.

Trustees are often viewed by executive directors and other staff members as a burden rather than a blessing, he says.

“More often than not, nonprofit EDs will gripe about the ‘dead wood’ on their boards, about board members who require enormous amounts of care and feeding, about micro-managers and broken promises,” writes Mr. Ruesga, who works as vice president at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, in Washington. “Effective board members exist, but they appear to be rare birds indeed.”

Mr. Ruesga suggests that board members need to take time to get to know the organizations for which they serve. They also need to spend more time...

An effort to create ethical standards for charities is a step in the right direction, but doesn’t go far enough, nonprofit governance experts say.

A committee appointed by Independent Sector, last week released a final report that spelled out 33 principles that charities and foundations can use as benchmarks to evaluate their policies for insuring they comply with the law and are monitoring their finances closely.

The guidelines also focus on how charities should disclose relevant information to the public, govern effectively, and conduct ethical fund-raising efforts.

Trent Stamp, president of Charity Navigator, writes on his blog that he had been reluctant to endorse the new standards because he didn’t believe they were strong enough to promote any real change.

“The worst charities in the land will simply ignore them with no fear of recourse,” writes Mr. Stamp.

Mike Burns, a ...

Tim Grieve, the author of Salon magazine’s War Room politics blog, is taking the spokesman for Mitt Romney to task for his recent comments in the The New York Times about the Salvation Army’s bell ringers.

Kevin Madden, the spokesman for the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said voters were likely to get annoyed by the amount of political messages they will receive during the forthcoming holiday season. To illustrate his point, he compared the candidates with holiday fund raisers for the Salvation Army.

“No longer will the guy with the Salvation Army bell outside the door be the most annoying person,” Mr. Madden told the Times. “It will be the candidate asking for your vote.”

Mr. Madden wrote Salon later to say that the statement was made tongue in cheek.

“Nevertheless, it was a thoughtless remark and I should have been more careful,” he wrote. “For that, I ...

Very few foundation leaders have started writing blogs as a way to share their insights into how their organizations operate.

But Nancy Schwartz, the author of the blog Getting Attention, has found a prominent foundation leader who she believes should be an inspiration to others.

Robert K. Ross, president of the California Endowment, has been occasionally sharing his thoughts on Bob’s Blog.

The blog covers a variety of health-care topics — especially issues related to providing medical care to the poor and uninsured — topics that are central to the California Endowment’s mission.

It works, Ms. Schwartz writes, because it fits the foundation’s mission and is part of a much larger communications strategy.

“I’m not surprised that Ross blogs so effectively,” she writes. “The California Endowment team members are true strategic communicators, parsing each channel for possible...

The Irish rock star Bono and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia are catching heat for the center’s decision to give the U2 lead singer its Liberty Medal.

The Tax Justice Network says the medal — given to those who foster a belief in justice, fairness, self-governance, and a balance between individual rights and communal responsibility — is inappropriate given the fact that U2 recently relocated its music-publishing company from Ireland to the Netherlands to lower its tax burden.

Bono has been a major force at several charities that work to improve conditions in Africa — and has made headlines for his campaign to have industrialized countries direct more money to Africa to alleviate poverty.

Ireland is one of the countries Bono has criticized for failing to support Africa, according to an essay on the Web site Slate.

Such a stance is hypocritical if Bono himself is ...

When the NFL star Peyton Manning made a donation to St. Vincent Health in Indianapolis, he gave the hospital much more than his money.

He also gave his name to St. Vincent’s children’s hospital.

As a result, Mr. Manning has given St. Vincent a significant opportunity to raise its profile and, in turn, raise more money, says the anonymous blogger who writes Don’t Tell The Donor.

“Rookie fund raisers make the mistake of thinking it is vanity that motivates hospitals to name a building after a major donor,” the author writes. “The truth is that when a living donor allows a hospital to name a building after them, it could be viewed as part of the donation and not just a reward for the ego.”

The writer says Mr. Manning will take an active role in helping to raise money for the organization.

But perhaps more important, hospital officials told The Indianapolis Star his name will...

Tuesday Morning Quarterback, a popular column about the National Football League on ESPN.com, this week criticizes the Denver Broncos play calling, college teams that run up the score, and the arm strength of Chad Pennington, the New York Jets quarterback.

But the column’s author, Gregg Easterbrook, doesn’t stop there.

Mr. Easterbrook, an author and a visiting professor at the Brookings Institution in Washington, also blitzes Harvard University for the size of its endowment.

Mr. Easterbrook calculates that Harvard’s $34.9-billion endowment, if it generates an annual investment return of 5 percent, would generate $1.7-billion annually if donors never chipped in another dime.

That figure would be enough to give $104,000 to each of Harvard’s 126,715 undergraduates — who pay nearly $38,000 annually to live on campus after their financial aid is factored in.

With those numbers as a...

The Clinton Global Initiative annual conference, which started today in New York, is using an array of approaches to allow people to stay in touch with the events online.

For example, visitors to its Web site can hear conference sessions live online.

In addition, the William J. Clinton Foundation has created its own YouTube channel that is devoted to offering online videos from the event.

Are other conferences and foundations using such online tools to this degree? Will such efforts become effective mediums for connecting with potential donors and supporters? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.

If nonprofit employees must respond to e-mail messages during their lunch hours, take phone calls from the executive director while driving to their kids’ soccer games, or communicate by Blackberry on the train to work, are they on the clock?

If those workers are labeled as non-exempt — meaning that they work in positions that the federal government says are eligible for overtime — the answer is yes, writes Jack Siegel on his blog, Charity Governance.

Mr. Siegel, an author and accountant in Chicago, points to a recent case in which an assistant for Oprah Winfrey’s production company who sought 800 hours of overtime over 17 weeks because of such tasks.

“The message should be clear,” Mr. Siegel writes. “Nonprofits should be reviewing job descriptions, hours actually worked, and the basis for categorizing workers as exempt or non-exempt.

“It may make sense to reclassify some...

Jeff Brooks has a simple message for charity officials who want to debunk myths in their fund-raising appeals: Don’t bother.

Mr. Brooks, a consultant at Merkle/Domain who writes Donor Power Blog, says fund raisers who try to combat myths with facts often do nothing but perpetuate the myth.

“Widespread myths are simply pieces of information that are sticky — albeit false. Like Iraq was responsible for 9/11,” Mr. Brooks writes. “They’re stickier than any negations or denials around them.”

Instead, he advises fund raisers to stick to simple, effective messages that carry an emotional punch.

“The myth-busting approach to fund raising is probably a lost cause,” Mr. Brooks writes. “Don’t whack ‘em around for believing untrue things. Give ‘em something better (and more true) to believe.”

What fund-raising approaches do you find to be most effective? Post a comment to share your...