Are professional athletes “obligated” to give back?

The Nascar driver Jeff Gordon, football quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and other sports stars are debating this question on the blog of Athletes for Hope, a charity that helps athletes with their giving.

To be sure, the debate isn’t a lot of sharp elbows and heavy hits. The sports figures agree with each other about the importance of philanthropy, but they do differ on their motivations. They wonder whether they ought to be charitable because they owe society or because they have a personal passion for it.

“Whatever choice you make and however you decide to give back, I believe that we all have an obligation to help those less fortunate than us, whether we are professional athletes or not,” writes soccer player Mia Hamm.

Football star Warrick Dunn counters that he needed a personal connection to spark his philanthropic...

While President Obama is in Europe next week, he is expected to pick up his Nobel Prize — and the $1.4-million that goes with it.

The president has pledged to give the money to charity, and The Washington Post’s In the Loop column is asking readers to submit suggestions as part of a contest.

The column’s writer, Al Kamen, offered some potential candidates, like charities in the hometowns of lawmakers. “Maybe a little something for Democrats wavering on health-care reform?” he wonders.

“For example,” he continues, “maybe Obama could give a couple hundred large to establish the Center for the Study of Ethanol Fuel in McCook, Neb., which, oddly enough, happens to be the birthplace of Sen. Ben Nelson. Or some money to fund the Blanche Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Helena, Ark., that senator’s hometown.”

The winner of the Loop contest gets only a T-shirt, but, hey, it’...

• While incidents of mismanagement and other problems can make young charity workers feel jaded about the nonprofit world, they can recharge their idealism by volunteering, talking to a mentor, or taking other steps, writes Kristin Ivie, of the Case Foundation, on its Social Citizens blog.

• Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of the charity-evaluation group GiveWell, advises donors to assume that, unless they have evidence to the contrary, aid projects are not supporting the poorest of the poor.

• Efforts to spur social innovation have reached a “critical inflection point,” but leaders must decide how they will measure their effectiveness and introduce more ideas, says Andrew Wolk, chief executive of Root Cause, a research group, on his blog. Listen to The Chronicle’s interview with Mr. Wolk. (Episode seven of the Philanthropy This Week podcast.)

• With the holiday season here...

An effort to develop so-called microvolunteering has received a lot of positive press, but one charity consultant argues it should be “slated for extinction.”

The Extraordinaries, a company that is developing technology so busy people can help charities and local governments using their cell phones, has been featured by CNN, Time magazine, and The Chronicle.

While using an iPhone or similar device to help a nonprofit group has its limitations, Jacob Colker, one of the group’s three co-founders, told The Chronicle in its article that the collective effort can produce results.

“Even a few minutes of brainpower is helpful. Especially when you have tens of thousands of people doing it,” he said.

But David Henderson, chief executive of Idealistics, a consulting company that works with social-service groups, writes on his blog that such volunteering does little to help the world...

The billionaire Eli Broad has chosen seven people who he says are the “most powerful philanthropists” in the world.

His list is part of a Forbes magazine effort to find out who the most powerful people are in politics, Hollywood, finance, and in other categories.

Mr. Broad, who is an avid arts and education donor, picked Bill and Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Dell, Michael Bloomberg, Peter Peterson, David Rockefeller Sr., and Wallis Annenberg.

Perhaps as interesting as who he included is who he left out. Big-name donors like Ted Turner and George Soros failed to make the list. So did the technology moguls Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll.

To be fair, Mr. Broad writes that he had trouble whittling his list down.

“I immediately came up with a list of more than 20 philanthropists who are notable in their passion and generosity,” he says. “But the seven I chose are...

Are students facing economic or social problems “at risk” or “at promise”?

A growing number of educators across the country are referring to such youth with the latter phrase, triggering a debate about how schools and nonprofit groups describe students, writes Jay Mathews, an education columnist for The Washington Post.

In a Post blog, Mr. Mathews says proponents of the change argue it will help instill a sense of potential and does not imply some kind of deficit in students. Others disagree.

Calling youth at promise “sugarcoats the larger issue: At-risk children are underserved children, and terming them anything else would take our eyes off the issues that plague them,” writes Lisa Feldner, a nonprofit communications consultant, in a letter to the editor.

On the other hand, Larry Bell, co-chair of the Reaching At-Promise Students Association, says the word change represents ...

Tim Ogden is challenging the thinking of two of the world’s most prominent donors — Bill and Melinda Gates.

As part of an effort to promote foreign aid, the Gateses describe themselves as “impatient optimists” — people who believe global-health programs have been successful but expect them to do more and be faster at eradicating diseases and such.

But Mr. Ogden, editor in chief of Philanthropy Action, says that if donors are too impatient, they run the risk of becoming cynical about what giving can achieve.

He recommends a “patient optimism” — “a view that combines the belief that change is possible with the belief that any significant transformation takes a great deal of time and effort.”

“Impatient optimists are like investors in subprime mortgages in 2007,” he writes. “They can be so blinded by the upside that they fail to do their due diligence. In the end, their...

Oxfam America is asking you to give a [bleep].

To promote giving during the holiday season, Oxfam America has produced a slightly bawdy, but funny, video. With a nod to the censored word, Oxfam suggests viewers donate $12, which will provide manure to impoverished farmers overseas.

The slick advertisement begins with an earnest mom sitting with her child and saying to the camera: “I never knew how much difference I could make just by giving a [bleep].”

She then extols her dry cleaner, parents at a playground, and others to follow suit. Eventually she is driving around a leafy suburban neighborhood in an ice-cream truck using a loudspeaker to ask strangers to give a … well, you know.

On his blog, which features the video, Jeff Trexler, professor of social entrepreneurship at Pace University, in New York, hails the ad.

“Please, please, please let this replace ‘raising...

Does the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation need a $500-million headquarters?

Robert Frank, who writes The Wealth Report, a Wall Street Journal blog, raises this question, pointing out that comparable Seattle businesses have spent far less.

The price tag for the new Gates headquarters “is more than three times what nearby Russell Investments paid for its 42-story headquarters tower to house its staff of 900 and manage more than $200-billion in assets.”

He says that Mr. Gates is the greatest American philanthropist since John D. Rockefeller Jr. and notes that the Gateses recently donated $350-million to pay for the facility. But still he wonders if the money wouldn’t be better spent on charitable programs.

The blog post has generated several online comments, both for and against the construction project.

One person attacks Mr. Gates, asking how many people could be fed with $50...

The White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation is failing to harness its true potential by simply supporting successful nonprofit groups, says Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable.

“Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t giving money to innovative organizations what hundreds of foundations try to do every year? Using the power of the White House for this purpose is like using Steve Jobs to write code,” he writes on his blog for the Harvard Business School.

Instead, he suggests six ways the new office could really push the envelope in the nonprofit world.

They include requiring foundations to provide 50 percent of their grant in operating support to charities, create a new quasi-public organization to regulate nonprofit groups, and allowing investors in for-profit groups that have a social mission to receive a tax deduction.

What do you think of his...