• People who fight poverty globally often fail to recognize the limited progress in struggling countries that can be attributed to foreign aid, says Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of the nonprofit-evaluation group GiveWell, on his blog.

• How many board members is enough for most small and midsized charities? On the Nonprofit Consultant Blog, Ken Goldstein pegs the magic range at nine to 14 members—big enough to avoid burnout and make it easy to achieve quorum, but small enough to avoid becoming unwieldy and fractious.

• Rosetta Thurman, who writes The Chronicle’s Leading Edge blog, has compiled an updated listing of more than 30 nonprofit and philanthropy blogs written by people of color.

• A new online partnership between the relief group Save the Children and the Ad Council seeks to spotlight the work of local health-care workers in the developing world, reports...

• The current discussion on helping innovative nonprofit organizations grow to scale is missing an opportunity by focusing on relatively new groups to the exclusion of older charities, John Brothers, a nonprofit consultant, writes on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.

• A new competition, Design for the First World, is looking for creative solutions to social and environmental problems from the developing world that could be applied in developed countries, Allison Arieff, writes on The Design of Everyday Life, a Good magazine blog. The goal of the contest, she writes, is to draw attention to the often paternalistic attitude of people in the West trying to fix problems in the developing world.

Sometimes it makes sense for a nonprofit organization to charge some customers a higher price as a way to subsidize a service for others via discounts, Rafi Mohammed, a business consultant, writes in a post about nonprofit pricing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review's blog.

Compelling photographs are critical to a sucessful appeal, but the images should not contradict the solicitation's message, Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, writes on Future Fundraising Now.

On his blog, Transformational Giving, Eric Foley, chief executive officer of Seoul U.S.A., rewrites from a fund raiser's point of view Leo Tolstoy's short story, Three Questions. In the reworked story, Mr. Foley asks his own three questions: "What is the best time to ask for a gift? Who are the most important donors to work with? What is the most important fund-raising activity to do at all times...

• Michael Seltzer, a contributor to Philantopic, discusses what he learned during the recent Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C. He says that countries need to make a commitment to reducing the social, economic, and health disparities that many women worldwide face today.

• A nonprofit Catholic health-care system in Boston is asking the city's archdiocese to stop its sale to a private-equity firm, after learning that a clause in the deal allows the firm to terminate the system's Catholic identity, says Gregory Corcoran, a writer for The Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog.

• Noel Beebe, interactive consultant at Convio, recently conducted a survey to find out what motivates people to participate in fund-raising events. She found that charities do best in attracting participants when they connect a donor's personal interests to the organization's mission....

• Peter Taylor, board chair of the James Irvine Foundation, discusses the lessons and challenges he has experienced in his role and offers insight on what nonprofit organizations should expect from their boards. He writes that the foundation's success will be a result of its board members efforts to engage and learn from other knowledgeable colleagues inside and outside the organization who have expertise in different areas.

• Nonprofit leaders have an amazing privilege and opportunity to help people connect to something larger than their own work, says Jocelyn Harmon, director of nonprofit services at Care2. On her blog, Ms. Harmon argues that nonprofit leaders need to spend less time on the trivialities of running their organizations and more time on becoming visionaries.

• Twitter may drive more traffic to an organzation's Web site -- more than twice as much, in the...

• Imagine a ranking of countries based on their efforts to encourage social innovation. That's the idea behind the "Social Competitiveness Index," and Matthew Bishop of The Economist magazine is asking readers of his blog, Philanthrocapitalism, to help shape the idea.

• Chevron and ExxonMobil are keeping low profiles on public television, Michael Getler writes in his ombudsman column on the PBS Web site. The two oil companies, which are not involved in the drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, have chosen to replace the spoken messages that used to acknowledge their sponsorship of popular PBS programs with logos.

• Mission creep leads to message creep, David Lawson, head of screening and analytics at DonorTrends, writes on Fundraising Action. Charities, he writes, often don't realize the vast array of sometimes contradictory messages they are communicating on their Web ...

• On the blog, Transformational Giving, Eric Foley, chief executive officer of Seoul USA, discusses why outsourcing fund-raising jobs has failed to become a growing trend among nonprofit organizations. He argues that charities see it as unethical and that the act of raising money still requires personal participation and ownership in the cause.

• Jed Emerson, a longtime advocate of a "blended" business-nonprofit approach to solving social problems, and Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, co-authors of Philanthrocapitalism, are developing a Social Competitiveness Index to rank countries "according to the effectiveness of their legal, fiscal, governance, and cultural environment" to spur social innovation.

• On Mashable, Greg Ferenstein writes about the growing market of "do-it yourself crowdsourcing Web sites that has made fund raising easier and more effective." He...

• For good or ill, news-media coverage, charity advertising, and "badvocacy" influence which aid projects get money, says Saundra Schimmelpfennig, who writes the blog Good Intentions Are Not Enough. She is collecting articles, blog posts, and other information on this topic and encourages readers to submit their suggestions.

• Gates Keepers, an anonymous blog on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, applauds the fund's recent discussion of findings from a Center for Effective Philanthropy report on the foundation and its efforts to become more responsive to grant recipients.

• The reasons why fund raisers should write appeals at a fourth to sixth-grade reading level has nothing to do with talking down to donors or treating them like children, Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, writes on Future Fundraising Now. "It's about ease of comprehension," ...

• Nathaniel Whittemore, founder of Assetmap and a blogger on social entrepreneurship for Change.org, says that the billionaires being prodded to give by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett should consider creating private-equity firms focused on social as well as financial impact. "Imagine Benetech founder and CEO Jim Fruchterman running a firm like this, supported by the Fortune 400 member David Rubenstein from the Carlyle Group (the largest private-equity firm in the world), and funded by everyone from Sergey Brin to Michael Bloomberg," writes Mr. Whittemore.

• If the true desire of the Gateses and Mr. Buffett is to help other people, they should hoard their wealth, not give it away, writes John Tamny of Forbes magazine. He says that giving their money to charity deprives the country of needed business investment that is the biggest driver for creating jobs and...

• On the World Affairs Council's blog, It's Your World, Jane Wales, vice president of philanthropy and society at the Aspen Institute, argues that state governments are increasingly shifting their responsibilities to the nonprofit world without the financial resources required to meet them. Ms. Wales says that federal grants managed by states are inconsistent in their treatment of indirect costs and tend to offer greater reimbursement to for-profit contractors than nonprofit ones.

• Changing Our World offers key tips from the group's executive vice president, Susan Raymond, based on her lecture during Fund Raising Day 2010, New York. Ms. Raymond says that to survive difficult financial times, nonprofit organizations need to evolve to stay afloat. She recommends taking a more corporate approach, such as developing a business plan and forming partnerships with mission-related...