Two blog writers have struck up a cordial debate about how best to deliver medicine and provide aid to improve people’s health in developing countries.

Alanna Shaikh, a veteran international aid worker, identifies misguided ways to offer medical assistance to needy people abroad on the Global Health blog of Change.org. They are: sending excess pharmaceuticals and medical equipment overseas; deploying a hospital ship; building hospitals that focus on cancer and other specialized needs; and transporting sick people to America for care.

“In my opinion,” she writes, “saving fewer lives than you could have is almost as immoral as not helping at all. In that context, it’s important to look at the things that don’t work.”

But Isaac Holeman disagrees.

Mr. Holeman, who is studying biochemistry and molecular biology at Lewis and Clark College and has worked for charities in South America...

With businesses shedding jobs daily, a large number of former corporate employees want to find work with nonprofit groups.

Thanks, but no thanks, says one charity leader.

Nancy Lublin, chief executive of Do Something, in New York, writes that many “refugees from the for-profit world” are knocking on her door, but too many are poorly prepared to join charities.

“I ask, ‘What kind of thing are you looking to do?’ They reply, ‘Oh, anything in the not-for-profit sector. I just want to make the world a better place.’ This is like me saying, ‘Oh, anything in the for-profit world would be fine. I just want to make money,’” she writes on a Fast Company blog.

“News flash: We’re not a bunch of dummies in Birkenstocks who sit around watching Oprah all day. Your résumé‘s expensive paper stock does not tell me anything about your office abilities. Your matchy-matchy suit and accessories...

A growing number of arts patrons and cultural groups are calling for President-elect Barack Obama to establish a greater role for the arts in his administration, including a new White House Office of the Arts.

But Drew McManus, a nonprofit consultant, challenges this proposal.

“I’m going to propose something that might seem like heresy but read the rest of the article before heading out for effigy supplies: Perhaps we don’t need a White House-level arts office with that much authority,” he writes on his blog Adaptistration.

While he agrees there needs to be a “major change” in how the federal government supports the arts, he is concerned that a new office could create bureaucratic hurdles and conflict with the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Ultimately, if the White House decides to go down the path of establishing a White House Arts Office, the country would be better served...

The University of Pennsylvania and Foreign Policy magazine this month produced the first ranking of the world’s think tanks.

Based on a worldwide survey of scholars and other thinkers, the effort examined 5,500 think tanks, many of which depend on support from foundations and wealthy philanthropists, and ranked them by country and other classifications.

The Brookings Institution, in Washington, was ranked the top think tank in America. Brookings, which has a budget of almost $61-million, receives support from some of the nation’s wealthiest grant makers, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

These three foundations also support a smaller think tank, the Center for Global Development, which ranked 15th.

David Roodman, a research fellow at the center, which is also in the nation’s...

Wikipedia, the nonprofit online encyclopedia, this month announced it had met its $6-million fund-raising goal six months ahead of schedule.

But not everyone is cheering.

While saying Wikipedia’s work is useful, “I do not think this is a more valuable service than say health care, heating or food for the poor,” writes Mike Burns, a nonprofit consultant, on his Nonprofit Board Crisis blog. “There are actually a whole lot of causes and concerns I think are more important that what Wikipedia has to offer the world. And yet, there are enough others who think differently.”

The authors of the book Philanthrocapitalism also give only “two cheers” that Wikipedia raised so much money. Their gripe, however, is more proprietary — they complain on their Values blog that Wikipedia defines the term philanthrocapitalism incorrectly.

What do you think? Should Wikipedia’s fund-raising success...

The Obama administration should require foundations to spend at least 10 percent of their assets on grant making and other charitable activities annually to help America solve its economic crisis, writes Martin Kearns, an online advocacy expert.

Currently the Internal Revenue Service makes foundations give on average 5 percent a year, but that is not enough, writes Mr. Kearns, the co-founder and executive director of the Green Media Toolshed, a nonprofit group that helps environmental organizations improve their communications skills.

“As part of the stimulus plan, the administration should shift the IRS rule that minimum payout must exceed 10 percent for the next 3 to 5 years. The money in foundations is money that our society has set aside without taxation to improve our common good,” he writes on his blog, Network-Centric Advocacy.

“Our society and the nonprofit sector need...

Less than two years after pledging to give about $1.5-billion to charity, the Scottish philanthropist Tom Hunter is saying he will have to slow the pace of his donations due to the economic recession.

Mr. Hunter said this week that his investment company, West Coast Capital, has been hit hard by the market downturn, losing as much as a quarter of its assets, reports the Daily Express, a newspaper in London.

Mr. Hunter said he still plans to meet his philanthropic commitment over his lifetime.

In an interview with The Chronicle in 2007, Mr. Hunter hinted that he knew fulfilling the big promise would be a gamble. (A paid subscription or free temporary pass is required to view the article.)

“I felt if I made the pledge public, I had no room to hide. We said, Let’s roll the dice, put the challenge up there, and have to keep the score,” he said.

The Independent, another...

Bill Clinton’s foundation is pushing back against the suggestion that the former president should not raise money for his charitable efforts if his wife is secretary of state.

Last month, a Washington Post editorial argued that the William J. Clinton Foundation does “valuable work” but the fact that the former president raises money from foreign governments and others “presents an unavoidable conflict” if his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the nation’s top diplomat.

“Ms. Clinton and the future Barack Obama administration would be better served if Mr. Clinton were to direct his prodigious energies elsewhere for the duration of her service,” it said.

But Bruce Lindsey, the foundation’s chief executive, blasted the idea in a letter to the editor this week.

Calling the editorial “shortsighted and dangerous,” Mr. Lindsey writes that the newspaper’s proposal would undermine Mr....

Google.org, the charitable arm of the technology company, will no longer support efforts to help entrepreneurs in poor regions of the world as part of changes in its international-development work.

Instead, Google will focus on its Inform and Empower program, which seeks to improve developing nations by organizing vital information and making it accessible to the public, writes Sonal Shah, Google.org’s director of global development, on its blog.

“We still strongly believe that growing small businesses will help the poor, but one of Google’s ten organizing principles is, ‘it’s best to do one thing really, really well,’” she writes. “As we evaluated our efforts this past year, it became clear that given Google.org’s unique strengths — including the ability to tap Google engineers to build and link better pathways to information — we could have a greater impact on the lives of the ...

The actress Angelina Jolie for a second year in a row topped AlertNet’s list of the most-respected celebrity humanitarians of 2008.

AlertNet, a Web site operated by the Reuters Foundation to cover international aid, polled its readers to identify the best high-profile do-gooder. Mia Farrow, the actress and Darfur activist, came in second. The least-respected celebrity was Madonna, who received condemnation for her contentious adoption of a boy from Malawi.

Ms. Jolie earned praise for visiting Afghanistan in October to assist refugees, a trip that took place only a few months after she gave birth to twins. Ms. Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, also donated $3-million through their foundation to benefit Ethiopian children and young victims of the Iraq war, writes Emma Batha, an AlertNet reporter.

Not all AlertNet readers adore Ms. Jolie, however. In comments that accompanied the ...