Mounting evidence is pointing to a recession, and nonprofit groups could start feeling the pinch, writes Michael Seltzer, a philanthropy expert and author.

Among the possible scenarios: Corporate giving will fall as profits tumble, foundations will cut back on grant making as returns on endowments decline, individuals will reduce their donations as unemployment and economic insecurity rises, and local and state governments will cut social services and spending on health and education as tax receipts fall.

“Nonprofits are survivors though,” Mr. Seltzer writes on PhilanTopic, a blog published by the Foundation Center. “We’re accustomed to wearing our belts snugly—and tightening them when the economy takes a turn for the worse.”

Mr. Seltzer recalls that during an economic downturn in the 1980s, many nonprofit groups started new efforts to generate income from businesses and other...

Maryland has ordered the National Organization of Deputy Sheriffs to stop raising money in the state and Virginia has warned consumers about the group. But the anonymous fund raiser who writes Don’t Tell the Donor says it’s a shame such warnings are offered only state by state.

“Perhaps it’s time we start thinking about a federal agency with enforcement powers,” the writer says. “Sure, it might seem scary, but any fund raiser who has had to fill out dozens of different state registration forms might be willing to consider one federal registration process.”

The blog also includes a link to a YouTube video of a Maryland resident confronting a canvasser from the National Organization of Deputy Sheriffs.

Do you think federal registration of charities would be a good idea? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.

The ethical principles issued this month by a committee of charity and foundation leaders offer little new and fail to deal with one of the most critical issues facing the nonprofit world — “out-of-line” executive compensation, says Dan Prives, author of Where Most Needed.

“The problem with these principles is that they are largely obsolete due to the rise of CEO power in organizations, as reflected by the large and disproportionate increase in CEO pay,” he writes.

Mr. Prives, a nonprofit-finance expert, takes a jab at some of the chief executives or executive directors who drew up the 33 principles of “ethical conduct, accountability, and transparency,” saying they earn salaries that are much higher than the next-highest-paid staff members at their own organizations.

His targets include Diana Aviv of Independent Sector, the coalition of charities and foundations that created...

The advocacy group OMB Watch is hoping the mistrial in the case against the Holy Land Foundation, formerly one of the country’s largest Muslim charities, will raise awareness of its concerns about the government’s approach to such charities.

“Will more notice our concerns with the designation process of groups as terrorist organizations, and will more now pay attention to the problems with shutting down a charity before any criminal charges are brought and freezing all of its assets all with secret evidence?” the government-watchdog group says on its Advocacy Blog.

The federal case against the Holy Land Foundation ended this week in a mistrial after jurors were unable to come to a unanimous decision on the nearly 200 counts brought against the charity and five of its former officers and supporters. The government had accused the defendants of funneling money to terrorist...

Many donors want to fight diseases that have affected them personally—and that irritates Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell, a group that analyzes the effectiveness of charities for donors.

People should think instead about working to eradicate diseases that would not threaten the lives of anyone they know—like diarrhea, he writes on The GiveWell Blog.

“Fighting diarrhea is simple and saves lives immediately,” he writes. “Nobody should be dying from it, anywhere, but they are—in large part because people who can help, people like you, aren’t around and haven’t seen them ‘up close,’ and are focused on the specific, narrow kind of suffering you’ve seen, instead of on fighting human suffering as well as we can.”

Mr. Karnofsky says he knows people he respects will disagree with that view. But, he adds, “this blog is personal and unfiltered, as you’ve been warned before.”

Do ...

Locks of Love, a charity that uses donated hair to make wigs for children suffering from medical hair loss, has defended itself on Trent Stamp’s blog against what it considers an “inaccurate and inappropriate” New York Times article.

After Mr. Stamp, president of the watchdog group Charity Navigtor, mentioned the article—which states that up to 80 percent of the hair donated to Locks of Love is unusable for its wigs—he received a letter from Madonna Coffman, president of the charity’s board.

She accused the Times of using an inflated number and said that editors had insisted the reporter find negative information about the group.

“The only hair that is ever ‘thrown out’ is hair that has been swept off the floor or has become moldy from being packaged wet over a long period, prior to receipt,” she wrote.

“We now have a classic case of ‘he said/she said,’” Mr. Stamp writes, “on...

A plan by the American Cancer Society to devote its advertising budget to a campaign to improve access to health care could alienate some donors, writes Trent Stamp, president of the watchdog group Charity Navigator.

Mr. Stamp says he admires the cancer society’s “boldness” for making the connection between the lack of health insurance and the ability to get preventive care, including an early diagnosis of cancer.

However, he writes on Trent Stamp’s Take, the plan also is a case of “mission creep.”

“I’m not sure how it’s going to play in the funeral homes and churches of this nation,” he writes, “when folks who made a donation in memory of a family member who died of cancer (but had plenty of insurance) find out their gift is going not to research or education, but to commercials urging Hillary Clinton to have the political courage to try again on universal health care.”

Mr....

As the number of nonprofit organizations grows rapidly, charities that raise money for the same cause often find themselves vying for the same donor dollars at special events.

Don’t Tell the Donor, a blog that features anonymous posts on fund-raising issues, is asking donors to weigh in on a controversy caused by competing events for the same causes.

After Autism Speaks, a national charity, raised about $35,000 for research into autism and related disorders by holding a walkathon in Burlington, Vt., last year, parents of children with the disorder started to question why they were not raising money to provide more immediate aid to families coping with autism, the blogger says.

To that end, Autism Support Daily, a local group, has decided to hold its own walkathon next month, just one day before Autism Speaks is scheduled to hold its second walkathon in Burlington. Both charities ...

Research shows that a powerful story about one individual moves donors more than general information about a program, or even stories about more than one person, advises Kivi Leroux Miller, a consultant who publishes Nonprofit Communications.

Ms. Miller offers 10 tips for incorporating storytelling into nonprofit communications. Among them:

• Include a story about a real person in every speech.
• Single out one person you are helping in a fund-raising letter.
• Give each board member at least one good story to use and ask trustees to practice it.
• Use a person’s story as the opening of a press release.
• Rotate stories about people getting aid on the front page of the charity’s Web site.

Do you have any tips for telling effective stories? If so, click on the comment link below this post.

A debate over charities and politics between Robert Egger, founder of D.C. Central Kitchen, and Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown University — which began in The Chronicle‘s opinion pages — is now continuing on Tactical Philanthropy.

Both Mr. Egger, author of Charities Must Change Politicians, and Pablo Eisenberg, author of Charities Should Remain Nonpolitical, have now weighed in on the blog.

This follows a live debate between the two earlier this month.

Mr. Egger writes that charities must get more involved in partisan politics to help influence public policy. “Our economic strength, our share of the work force in every community, and the number of voters who volunteer with the nonprofit sector are tremendous assets that we could use to promote a dialogue that politicians and businesspeople are not currently interested in having,” he says.

But Mr. Eisenberg