On his Fundermentalist blog, Jacob Berkman is covering the annual meeting of the Jewish Funders Network, which he says is focusing on how donors can support innovative efforts.

“It almost in a sense feels like one big dare to the funders here to fund outside-of-the-box projects,” he writes on his blog, which is operated by the JTA, a Jewish news service. “One could question whether that is the right approach to take during a recession, when funds are tight and traditional charitable projects are seeing an increase in need and demand for services. I’ll let you make that call.”

During the St. Petersburg, Fla., conference Mr. Berkman has attended panels about how charitable groups should generate money and other resources to survive long-term and how donors say no to grant seekers during the recession.

Mr. Berkman also writes that Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders...

As public anger grows over the payment of bonuses at companies that received federal-bailout money, Alice Korngold wonders how nonprofit executives should be compensated.

On her Fast Company blog, Ms. Korngold, a nonprofit consultant in New York, writes that charities should provide “fair and reasonable compensation” to attract and retain good executives. But bonuses should not be part of it.

She argues that bonuses are a bad idea because nonprofit leaders are driven by the missions of their organizations, not financial incentives, and because determining what performance goals a board would set to determine if someone should receive extra pay is tricky.

For example, if a chief executive receives a bonus because he or she ran a successful fund-raising campaign, it would undermine the charity, writes Ms. Korngold.

“Fund-raising and revenue development to achieve financial...

The prime minister of New Zealand has stirred up a bit of controversy this week by encouraging people in his country to donate the money they will have thanks to recent tax cuts his administration enacted.

Speaking to a conference on philanthropy, the prime minister, John Key, said that those who do not need the extra money should give it to charity to help develop a culture of giving similar to the one in America, reports The New Zealand Herald.

Mr. Key, who is member of one of the country’s conservative parties, was chastised by left-leaning politicians.

The Labor Party leader said that the tax cuts favor the wealthy and instead of asking well-off people to donate some of their extra money, the prime minister should have geared tax benefits to aid low-income workers.

Victor Billot, a spokesman for the liberal Alliance Party, said that while charities play an important role ...

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy last month riled some foundation feathers by recommending that grant makers spend at least half of their grant dollars to help the poor, minorities, and other disadvantaged people.

While some critics said the foundation watchdog’s proposal would hurt giving to the arts and other causes not directly related to fighting poverty, Aaron Dorfman, the committee’s executive director, is applauding a recent gift to the arts.

The former head of the Walt Disney Company, Michael Eisner, through his family foundation donated $1.25-million to finance an arts program for Los Angeles schools.

On his organization’s blog, Mr. Dorfman writes the “gift is a perfect example of how foundations can simultaneously promote the causes they care about (in this case, the arts) and benefit marginalized communities.”

He says the contribution will...

As public outrage grows for the $165-million in bonuses handed out to American International Group employees, one person has a novel suggestion: give the money to charity.

Richard Brewster, a nonprofit consultant in Virginia, suggests that the bonuses should support the Starr Foundation, a New York philanthropy established by Cornelius Vander Starr, an entrepreneur who founded the company that would eventually became AIG.

The Starr Foundation’s assets have been devastated by recent stock-market turmoil, declining 46.5 percent in 2008.

“The foundation could ask someone of high reputation in the philanthropy world to oversee how the money is spent and report to the public how much has been received,” Mr. Brewster writes in an e-mail message to The Chronicle.

“The government may yet find ways of recovering the money through legal action but, in the mean time, why not give the...

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is opening a new office in London to work more closely with European governments and nonprofit groups.

The office will open later this year, according to a statement on the foundation’s Web site. Aside from its headquarters in Seattle, Gates has offices in Washington, Beijing, and Delhi.

“The new office will allow the foundation to deepen relationships with its Europe-based partners, liaise with grantees, and work closely with governments, European institutions, and non-governmental organizations,” the foundation said.

According to The Seattle Times, the office will be led by Geoffrey Lamb, the organization’s managing director for public policy and senior advisor on international policy. The office will employ five or six people, writes Kristi Heim, a Times reporter, on the newspaper’s Business of Giving blog.

Of the top 10 wealthiest...

A recent report by McKinsey & Company’s Social Sector Office on the proliferation of prizes in philanthropy, business, and government raises some questions for foundations, writes Robert Hughes, chief learning officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Writing on Pioneering Ideas, a blog created by the Johnson fund to discuss innovative ideas in health care, Mr. Hughes says the report offers an excellent overview of the growth in prizes. The Johnson foundation itself has been involved in efforts that use prizes to improve health.

Mr. Hughes writes that prize philanthropy still requires better definitions and a better understanding of how it differs from more traditional philanthropic approaches. He also would like to have more details about the downsides of awarding prizes.

“We need much more information than this report provides about risks, difficulties, and failures....

This week Google unveiled a new telephone program, which allows people to route calls to different telephones to one number and offers cheap domestic and international calling.

While tech geeks and others debate what Google Voice will mean for global communications, Allan Benamer, a former information-technology manager for charities, writes that the free service means some nonprofit groups need to examine their mission.

Mr. Benamer, who is executive director of Social Markets, writes on his Nonprofit Tech Blog that charities that offer phone and voice-mail services to homeless people and other clients in distress are practically obsolete because of Google Voice.

He suggests they change their approach as a result.

“I’ve often thought it would be a good idea for homeless clients to also have a one-stop shop where they can could scan in documents such as wedding, birth, and...

The philanthropist Eli Broad this week discussed his role in helping to reshape public schools in New York and elsewhere.

According to Gotham Schools, a Web site that reports on education in New York, Mr. Broad talked about his close relationship with the head of the city’s school system and also mentioned that some of his foundation’s staff members will be working for Arne Duncan, the new secretary of education.

Later during the event at the 92nd Street Y, Mr. Broad discussed the failure of his foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to get more attention for education issues during last year’s presidential campaign. The effort was known as “Ed in 08.”

“About Ed in 08, Broad said simply, ‘We didn’t succeed,’” writes Philissa Cramer, a reporter for Gotham Schools. “He said that while candidates adopted pieces of the campaign’s platform, it failed to make inroads in...

To dissect the nuances of the battle between Princeton University and the Robertson family, the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal has collected a variety of opinions on it.

The bitter dispute centered on an endowment, known as the Robertson Foundation, that supports the university’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The endowment was established in 1961 by Charles and Marie Robertson. William Robertson, their son, and other family members sued the university in 2002, saying the university had not adhered to the terms of the gift.

The dispute was settled in December. (Read The Chronicle’s article about the settlement.)

The Bradley Center asked about a dozen nonprofit thinkers to discuss what the fight means for donors and the recipients of their gifts — and the opinions differ greatly.

For example, Neal B. Freeman,...