For more than a decade, aid workers have been providing food and medical care to hundreds of thousands of people crammed into Uganda’s displacement camps. But are the workers actually prolonging the conflict that has caused so much suffering?, asks Emma Batha on the Reuters Alertnet blog.

The journalist Matthew Green writes in a new book, Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted, that many people were forced into the camps by the Ugandan government, eager to close in on the rebel leader Joseph Kony by cutting him off from supporters.

Mr. Green says that the World Food Program was sucked into this strategy by providing aid to the camps.

“The government said at the time it would be a few months,” he says, according to Ms. Batha. “Ten years later the camps were still there and they caused arguably more suffering than the rebels. The amount of disease, the squalor and...

Should board members be required to donate a minimum amount to the charities they lead? Kelly Kleiman, writing on the Nonprofiteer, thinks so.

Among her reasons:

And where should the bar be set? Ms. Kleiman recommends starting with a $500 minimum donation.

Community foundations risk being eclipsed by Fidelity and other companies’ donor-advised funds as vehicles for helping donors give away their money, writes Phil Cubeta on Gift Hub.

Mr. Cubeta, an adviser to the wealthy, says he was recently contacted by a community foundation in Dallas that had been asked by a donor for help on thinking through values, vision and finances. “The community foundation is nonplussed since they are not staffed for that role,” he says.

Continues Mr. Cubeta: “Unless community foundations add more more value, and emphasize relationships, local presence, and ideals, they will find Fidelity and other financial intermediaries tough competition.”

Jeff Trexler, professor of social entrepreneurship at Pace University, writing on Uncivilsociety.org, agrees. “The philanthropic landscape has evolved in ways that many community foundations — indeed, many charities —...

What type of nonprofit leadership do you prefer?, asks Phil Cubeta on Gift Hub.

Do you prefer nonprofit organizations run by people educated in the liberal arts, whose focus is “on a vision of human flourishing.” Those leaders then hire people with master’s degrees in business and other experts to carry out that vision.

Or do you like to see MBAs and other technical experts at the helm? “Their vision is one of effective and efficient optimization of numbers on a spreadsheet. They hire liberal-arts graduates to staff public relations, advertising, and to serve as their speech writers,” says Mr. Cubeta.

Mr. Cubeta, an adviser to wealthy donors, is worried that the nonprofit world is drifting toward the second approach.

“We have people of ends reporting to people of means; people of vision reporting to spreadsheet or managerial people. I do not think this is a good way to run...

How should a fund raiser pitch companies for money?

Tom Durso, a public-relations consultant writes on his 501cFiles, has about tips he gathered from a discussion with Wade Colclough, corporate-contributions manager at PECO Energy.

Among the advice:

• Pay attention to trends affecting the businesses you’re approaching. With concerns about global warming on the rise, PECO is giving more to environmental causes and less to arts and culture groups.

• Don’t assume that companies have endless amounts of money to donate. Their main business is making money, not giving it away.

• Outline in your pitch how the project you’re raising money for would benefit the company’s interests.

• Find ways to involve the company’s employees.

• Pitch to a specific person, and don’t bother the company with questions that a little Web research could answer.

• Companies rethink...

Why don’t all charities adopt the leadership approach embraced by many arts groups — an artistic director to head programs, and a managing director in charge of raising and allocating money, asks Kelly Kleiman on The Nonprofiteer.

“Wouldn’t social-service agencies operate better with someone at the helm whose expertise was effective service to clients and someone at the rudder whose expertise was squeezing every dime til it shrieked?,” she writes.

Leading innovation and managing money are not identical or even complementary skills, says Ms. Kleiman. So why do most charities combine them in the role of executive director?

Donors who want results should recognize that it takes two people — one to innovate and experiment, and the other to measure and manage — to run an effective organization.

What do you think of Ms. Kleiman’s ideas? Is the split leadership approach likely to...

Is it practical to support development projects in a nation as unsafe as Somalia, where relief trucks must be accompanied by armed soldiers, asks Emma Batha on the Reuters AlertNet blog.

The Eastern African nation is so dangerous that aid groups can’t even reach many of the people who’ve fled fighting among warlords, Islamic insurgents, and troops. Attacks in Mogadishu, the capital, killed more than 6,500 people last year, says Ms. Batha.

So wouldn’t it be unwise for donors to support long-term, expensive projects to develop the country and its infrastructure?

Guillermo Bettocchi, the United Nation’s country representative, doesn’t think so. Somalia is facing not just violence, but floods that create wide-scale humanitarian needs, writes Ms. Batha.

Mr. Bettocchi says that if a dam were built, the problem would be fixed. But because donors see the dam as a development project, ...

The latest issue of The New York Times magazine noted that the group Kiva can’t keep up with the demand for new projects to support.

The article said that Kiva, which links online donors to small business owners in the developing world, faced an “extremely unusual challenge: maintaining adequate supply (people who need help) to meet demand (people who want to give it).”

But Caroline Heine writes on the Philanthromedia blog that the challenge facing Kiva isn’t unique at all. It’s “just one more example of the problems caused by the absence of a ‘true’ social capital marketplace,” she says. There are very few good ways to connect needy projects with sources of capital, Ms. Heine writes.

“That is why nearly half of all charitable giving goes to religious and educational institutions, while health, human-services, and public-benefit organizations combined receive only 24 percent of...

Master’s degrees in business, law, and public administration may seem like the most obvious choices for someone considering a career in philanthropy, writes Phil Cubeta on Gift Hub..

But Mr. Cubeta says that most top consultants to wealthy donors have a more-varied pedigree.

A background in the humanities is essential for giving away money effectively, says Mr. Cubeta. “The mean technical trades provide no ...

Why is the Hewlett Foundation still considering support for GiveWell, asks Kelly Kleiman on her blog, The Nonprofiteer.

In a New York Times’ article on the GiveWell board’s decision to reprimand the second of the group’s founders for misrepresenting himself on the Internet, a Hewlett official is quoted as saying the foundation is “going to wait and see” but “we think the concept has a lot of value.”

Ms. Kleiman takes issue with that notion. “Would that be the concept that it might be relevant to funding decisions if a group devoted to judging charities based on transparency and management excellence proves itself deceptive and ill-managed?,” she asks. “Or the concept that someone might be concerned about entrusting charitable reputations to an organization whose self-promotion included anonymous attacks on the reputations of its charitable competitors?”

What do you think? Does...