• JPMorgan Chase & Company damaged its brand by not being more open about its $5-million Facebook contest for charities, Nathaniel Whittemore, founder of Assetmap, a start-up Web company in San Francisco, writes on Change.org.

• In light of such criticism of JPMorgan, Beth Kanter, a social-media expert, offers some suggestions on her blog for how companies and others can improve such competitions for philanthropic money.

• How much value does Justin Timberlake or Paris Hilton actually generate for charity? The Daily Beast looks at how much money and news-media attention 50 celebrities bring in as champions for their favorite causes.

• While the Obama administration has pursued several prominent nonprofit programs, the efforts largely ignore the needs of small charities — those with annual revenues less than $1-million, writes Rick Cohen, a national correspondent for...

• “Volunteers are neither saints nor teddy bears,” says Jayne Cravens, a nonprofit consultant, on her blog. They are people motivated to donate their time for their own selfish reasons but are still a valuable resource nonetheless, she says.

• Why not use social media — Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites — to help nonprofit boards run their organizations? asks Beth Kanter, a blogger who writes about online trends.

• 2010 will see the rise of “niche” online networks designed to raise money for specific causes or specific, one-time charitable projects, predicts Debra Askanase, a charity consultant, on her blog.

• It’s not unusual for a nonprofit trustee to take over a charity when an executive director leaves, writes Mike Burns, a consultant, on his blog Nonprofit Board Crisis. But is that really in the best interest of the nonprofit group? he asks.

• Daniel J....

Charity Navigator, poking holes in the value of overhead ratio? Actually, yes.

The watchdog group, which gives charities good scores for spending little on overhead in comparison to their program expenses, is one of five organizations trying to get Americans to pay less attention to administrative and fund-raising costs when they think about which groups to support. (See this press release from the five groups.)

Along with the nonprofit groups GuideStar, GiveWell, GreatNonprofits, and Philanthropedia, Charity Navigator is pressing bloggers and journalists to write this holiday season about why low overhead isn’t a good indicator of charity success.

They say the administration-to-program ratio tells donors nothing about the impact of a charity’s programs. A preoccupation with keeping down administrative costs also prevents charities from spending money on tools that would help...

A new study may refute charges that Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks promote “slacktivism,” writes Kristin Ivie on the blog Social Citizens.

The study by the National Conference on Citizenship found that young people who discussed civic causes on Facebook and other online networks were more likely to donate money or volunteer their time than those who were not.

Ms. Ivie, social-innovation program associate at the Case Foundation, says this “seems to refute arguments that social media is just encouraging slacktivism by allowing people to edit their avatar or join a Facebook group without really having engaged.”

She adds that, because “social citizens can be all ages,” “perhaps encouraging the use of social media for good by other generations will improve offline engagement as well.”

What do you think? Should charities be encouraging more people of all ages to...

Should Americans be able to take deductions for products and services they buy from businesses whose work creates social good?

Dan Pallotta, writing on his Free the Nonprofits blog, says such a move would “break the 501©3 monopoly on charity” and foster all sorts of for-profit efforts to pursue social good. Mr. Pallotta has long been a promoter of business-oriented efforts to promote social causes: He founded Pallotta TeamWorks, a company that organized fund-raising events to benefit cancer charities and other causes.

Mr. Pallotta says his idea would bring a more entrepreneurial spirit to solving social problems, a spirit Mr. Pallotta says is stifled by risk-averse boards, poor pay, no stock options, and the inability of nonprofit entrepreneurs to own any of what they have created.

Yes, someone could start a for-profit homeless shelter now, Mr. Pallotta acknowledges. But he...

A charity’s campaign to fight obesity among youngsters is drawing controversy, according to Politico, a news site that covers Washington.

The advocacy effort by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine features these words from 8-year-old Jasmine Messiah: “President Obama’s daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don’t I?”

Eye-grabbing, yes, but is the campaign in poor taste?

Politico suggests the campaign may anger the White House. “This is not the way to win the heart of the president,” Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told the news organization.

The advocacy effort also includes a letter from Ms. Messiah to Sasha and Malia Obama, in which she urges them to sign the group’s petition to Congress calling for more vegan, vegetarian, and non-dairy food options in public schools.

The nonprofit group says it’s not worried...

Here are some of latest blog items and opinion pieces on the nonprofit world worth noting:

• Writing on her smArts and Culture blog, Maryann Devine lists “eight signs that your arts organization isn’t quite ready to use blogging to connect with your patrons.”

• What’s the difference between a “high-performing” and a “high-impact” nonprofit group? Sean Stannard-Stockton, a donor adviser and columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy, discusses that question on his blog Tactical Philanthropy.

• On the New Philanthropy Capital blog, John Copps writes about why more charities don’t acknowledge that their ultimate goal should be to put themselves out of business.

• The Nonprofit Technology Network’s NTEN blog offers a long list of resources for nonprofit groups that want to put technology to use for their cause.

• Beth Kanter blogs about why Planned Parenthood has...

All nonprofit groups — not just those that work directly with immigrants — “have a stake in treating, serving, advocating for, and supporting immigrants in this nation,” writes Rick Cohen on his Nonprofit Quarterly blog.

He says all charities should be prepared to fight against ignorance about immigrants and immigration issues. Mr. Cohen says there are a lot of “myths,” for example, about the negative environmental impact of immigration that environmental groups should speak out against.

He also writes that nonprofit groups should fight for fairness in the treatment of immigrants, including advocating against proposals that would block immigrants from gaining access to community health centers and emergency rooms.

Mr. Cohen encourages charities to support an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, help ensure that the census fairly counts immigrants, and oppose...

Achieving “sustainability” — not just paying for children’s immunizations, for example, but increasing immunization rates over time without continued donor support — is an important goal for many philanthropists, Holden Karnofsky writes on the GiveWell blog.

Yet GiveWell, a group that evaluates charities, doesn’t currently list “sustainability” as one of its key criteria.

Why not?

Mr. Karnofsky says: “While we’ve seen many charities aiming for sustainability, we’ve yet to see any that can demonstrate both future plans and past success in this area.”

Most of the international aid charities that GiveWell recommends to donors are trying to achieve sustainability, but few have reached that goal.

For example, Mr. Karnofsky says he is skeptical of plans by Partners in Health, a charity that performs well in GiveWell’s evaluations, to hand off financing duties to the Rwandan...

As president of the nonprofit watchdog group Charity Navigator, Ken Berger is accustomed to hostile audiences.

And he was indeed met with some skepticism and a flurry of questions from international nonprofit officials at the annual conference of InterAction last week, where he spoke about his efforts to change the way Charity Navigator rates nonprofit groups.

The watchdog organization has long been criticized for focusing too much attention on how much charities spend on administration. One nonprofit official who spoke at the InterAction conference, for example, said his group was so concerned about high administrative costs that it was reluctant to spend money keeping staff members safe overseas.

Mr. Berger said he understands such concerns and wants to find ways to resolve them. He said that Charity Navigator intends to modify the system it uses for rating charities’...