A New York Times story about the American Red Cross’s $200-million operating deficit and pending staff cuts has left the author of Don’t Tell the Donor wondering: What sunk the charity into such a financial hole?

“Take your pick. Is this the result of the leadership scandal caused by Mark Everson’s departure, the lack of any significant natural disasters in 2007, or the first wave of RIFs that ‘a fund raiser’ has been warning against for the past two weeks,” the anonymous blogger writes.

Jack Siegel also weighs in on the topic at Charity Governance. The Red Cross’s fund raising was hurt, he says, by a new approach the charity took after September 11 to allow donors to earmark gifts for victims of specific disasters.

The fund-raising program, called Donor Direct, and the public’s “obsession with big disasters,” has been largely responsible for the Red Cross’s plight, Mr. Siegel ...

How can charities encourage donors who are motivated by disasters to give again? So asks Jeff Brooks on his Donor Power Blog.

Mr. Brooks writes, in response to a Chronicle article on tsunami donors, that “the problem with disaster donors is their lower ‘renewal’ level than ‘normal’ donors.”

“This shouldn’t surprise us; these donors are often folks unmoved by the normal need for charity. But when they show up in huge numbers on an organization’s donorbase, they can cause a lot of confusion,” he says.

Mr. Brooks’s advice for dealing with disaster-motivated donors:

• Keep them informed about the impact of their gifts.

• Don’t immediately start talking about other ways for them to give. “Put the rest of your mission in context with the disaster for them,” he says.

• Don’t expect additional gifts of the same size. People often give unusually high amounts in response to...

Aid groups and journalists need to rethink their relationship, writes Glenda Cooper, a fellow at the Reuters Institute, in Oxford, on the Reuters Alertnet blog. The distinction between the two has started to blur, she says, with potentially harmful consequences.

Aid organizations have “pushed the idea of press officers as ‘fireman’ reporters – not just facilitating media requests but attempting to influence the news agenda by writing and filming themselves,” she writes.

Charity workers are appearing in the pages of newspapers — not just as authors of opinion pieces, but on the news and feature pages, with their work appearing under the names of staff writers. Broadcasters are presenting video footage shot by aid groups as their own.

Journalists, meanwhile, are increasingly sounding like humanitarian workers. “For example, one told me he hoped that his reporting would help raise...

Does it make sense for a 23-year-old fund raiser to go back to graduate school, asks the author of the Future Leaders in Philanthropy blog.

The fund raiser has been working at a charity for a year-and-a-half, and is wondering whether money put toward a master’s degree in business would be well spent.

“Do nonprofit groups care about the degree? Or should he instead focus on getting the right jobs?” asks the blogger.

“It depends on where he dreams of going,” responds Sam Davidson. “If he’d like to be the CEO of a major nonprofit, then get the MBA now when you’re used to going to school. It will pay for itself in the end … But, if he wants to be a hands-on program manager in a service-based nonprofit, then he should get the right jobs.”

Maybe the fund-raising professional should consider a master’s in public administration instead of a MBA, says Paul Verrette, who attended New ...

Creating a mission statement can sometimes feel as “difficult and unrewarding as having a root canal,” writes Kelly Kleiman on her blog The Nonprofiteer. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Ms. Kleiman writes that charities can simplify the process by spending an hour — or even just 15 minutes — drafting a single sentence that outlines their mission.

The statement, she says, should take the following form: “We do [activity] so that [result will occur].”

Among the examples she gives: “We conduct educational campaigns so the public will demand legislation outlawing smoking,” and “We commission and perform new plays so we can keep alive a sense that it’s important to experience things in other people’s company and not just alone at our computers.”

Avoid replacing “so that” with “because,” Ms. Kleiman writes. “If you use the word “because” you’ll end up with statements like, “We...

Why does the American Red Cross continue to flounder? The answer isn’t what you might expect in the wake of the recent scandal involving of its chief executive, writes Hildy Gottlieb in her blog Creating the Future.

The Red Cross, Ms. Gottlieb says, lacks vision and values.

Like so many other charities, it is more preoccupied with “organizational survival” — namely avoiding the next round of budget cuts, getting board members engaged, and other day-to-day concerns — than it is with its mission. As a result, it continues to make bad decisions.

Ms. Gottlieb warns that charities too often lose sight of why they are doing their work. “Without first focusing on achieving huge and over-the-top results for the people we serve, and only then asking what capacity we will need to accomplish that, we are building capacity for the sake of building capacity,” she writes.

What do you think? ...