Charities that want to grow quickly often have to turn to less-than-legitimate methods to boost their revenue.

William Foster and Gail Fine of the Bridgespan Group in Boston studied the growth of 144 organizations that were created after 1970 and now regularly earn at least $50-million in annual income and found that those groups succeeded, in large part, because they stuck largely with a single source of income that is aligned closely with their charitable missions.

The results of the study, How Nonprofits Really Get Big, was published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

But Dan Prives, a nonprofit finance expert, has studied the data a bit more closely and found some other traits that mark the 144 organizations in the Bridgespan study.

Mr. Prives, writing on his blog Where Most Needed, notes that four of the five largest organizations in the study rely heavily on...

The NAACP’s decision to cut 40 percent of the staff at its national headquarters in Baltimore and shut down its seven regional offices has drawn a range of views about how and whether the NAACP can rebound from its financial troubles.

The organization pointed to rising gas prices, fund-raising, and declining membership for its decision to trim its staff size. But the anonymous fund raiser who writes the blog Don’t Tell The Donor says the NAACP’s financial problems could have been avoided if it had been more effective at soliciting donations.

“Something makes me think increases in gas prices weren’t nearly as important as not having a chief development officer,” the fund raiser wrote.

Among other views:

• Trent Stamp, president of the watchdog group Charity Navigator, writes on his blog that the organization has been “hemorrhaging money for at least three years.” He adds: “It’...

It might not have the grit of The Sopranos or the humor of The Office, but the charity world is getting a growing share of TV time, thanks to the explosion of online video.

On the blog Philanthropy 2173 Lucy Bernholz, a consultant to foundations and donors, chronicles the expanded presence of online videos about socially-oriented business operations.

Organizations as diverse as PBS, the Skoll Foundation, the Harvard University Business School, and the University of Michigan have all devoted online video programming to social enterprise, Ms. Bernholz writes.

“These are definitely two trends that fit each other,” she writes. “Video helps spread the ideas of social enterprise, makes it personal, engaging, and — as in the case of organizations such as Witness — can also be a tool for the enterprise itself.”

You can check out an excerpt from PBS’s Enterprising Ideas program below.

Charity watchdogs routinely complain about the scant resources available in the United States to properly monitor the practices of charities.

But the nonprofit finance expert Dan Prives, citing a recent report in the Toronto Star, writes that oversight is much more lax north of the border in Canada.

Writing on his blog, Where Most Needed, Mr. Prives says the Canadian equivalent of the IRS Form 990 is largely devoid of important information. Charities are not required to name their top officers — or even provide their addresses.

The financial information on the reports are also difficult to decipher.

“Although all the financial information in the report is available (unlike the U.S., where only images of the form are online via GuideStar), the interface hinders rather than facilitates analysis, and comparative analysis is extremely difficult,” he writes.

But, Mr. Prives says,...

Many of the people who handle charities’ online marketing and fund raising primarily belong to Generation X, people born from 1965 to 1980. Meanwhile, they’re trying to reach older baby boomers, who make up a big percentage of online donors and activists and have more disposable incomes.

And “therein lies the rub,” writes Mark Rovner, president of Sea Change Strategies, an online fund-raising and marketing consulting firm, in The Integrator, a blog started by the Direct Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Federation.

Mr. Rovner, himself a baby boomer, says that Generation Xers craft online messages, videos, and other electronic communications that don’t appeal to his generation. And he doesn’t have to look any further than his own consulting company—where he has at least three Generation X colleagues—to find examples.

In one instance, a younger colleague created a “biting Flash...

Robert Thalhimer doesn’t want to hear people complaining about how the next generation of givers will not be as generous as the current crop.

The senior vice president for advancement at the Community Foundation Serving Richmond and Central Virginia, writes on PhilanthroMedia that he has heard that complaint before. And it’s just plain wrong.

“Each generation worries about succeeding generations and the loss of its own,” Mr. Thalhimer writes. “Every time an elder donor passes away or a generous corporation leaves, their beneficiaries see an irreplaceable loss.”

Yet giving continues — always at higher levels than before.

From what he’s already seen from younger adults, Mr. Thalhimer writes that he expects that trend to continue well into the future.

“The younger generations seem to have gained a greater sense of philanthropy that we have given them credit for. Many inheritors...

The Internal Revenue Service is still investigating hundreds of possible violations about charities that were improperly attempting to influence voters during the 2006 election cycle.

And it doesn’t look like the tax agency will get a break for the 2008 Presidential election.

Paul L. Caron, professor of law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, writes on TaxProf that the agency is already getting complaints about recent comments by the Florida evangelist Bill Keller, the leader of Bill Keller Ministries.

The nonprofit advocacy group Americans United For Separation of Church and State says Mr. Keller’s organization should be stripped of its charitable status as a result of remarks the evangelist made about the candidacy of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“Having Romney as president is no different than having a Muslim or Scientologist as president,” the...

Older donors might be where the money is now.

But giving up on recruiting younger donors — as was suggested recently by the fund-raising consultant Jeff Brooks — could be a recipe for long-term problems.

So says Tom Belford, a fund-raising expert and an author of The Agitator.

Mr. Belford says nonprofits should devote the bulk of their resources toward grabbing donors who are most likely to give now.

But he argues that fund raisers should also be looking at ways to build relationships with those who are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

Mr. Belford writes that nearly half of all people younger than the baby boomers give to charity and that such people are also useful in filling the ranks of activists and volunteers.

More important, he writes that the younger set will be more likely to give later to groups that build relationships now.

“Brand awareness matters now,” he writes....

The concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands could be a good thing for organizations that work to promote social change.

But that will only happen if wealthy people use their money as a tool to improve society and teach their children to adopt the same philosophy, writes Phil Cubeta, a financial and charitable-giving adviser who runs Gift Hub.

Unfortunately, though, America is more closely resembling an oligarchy in which “wealthy families throw their weight around through the funding of think tanks, lobbying, charitable donations, board seats, and business deals so that all of society is essentially rigged to their benefit,” Mr. Cubeta writes.

Still, Mr. Cubeta — who describes himself as a “morals tutor to America’s wealthiest families” — sees hope.

And he calls on those who share his role — and mindset — to play the role of tutor, with the hope that they can help put...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has pulled together a group of thinkers to contribute to a blog on preparing for a possible pandemic flu.

The recently launched The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week online effort aimed at raising awareness and stimulating discussion about the possibility of such a pandemic hitting the United States.

Several writers with ties to the philanthropic world — including Sister Patricia Talone, vice president of mission services for the Catholic Health Association; the White Courtesy Telephone author Albert Ruesga; the eBay founder and Omidyar Network partner Pierre Omidyar; and the Spare Change author and consultant Nedra Kline Weinrich, — are contributing to the blog.

And some of the early posts are taking aim at the Bush Administration — saying that its policies are weakening efforts to prepare for such a disease.

“The most ...