Writing on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, Sean Stannard-Stockton says there are two “factually accurate headlines” that could have run with the release of Giving USA’s annual study on donations.

Here’s the first one: “Charitable Giving Exceeds $300-Billion. Second Highest Level of Giving Ever!”

And here’s the second: “Charitable Giving Falls Dramatically. Largest Percentage Drop on Record!”

So which is right? Mr. Stannard-Stockton, a frequent contributor to The Chronicle, sees it like this: Charitable giving contracted sharply in 2008, but “that contraction was less than many people feared and the total amount given was within the range of the level of giving seen over the past few years.”

Gifts made directly to secular charities, when adjusted for inflation, fell 8.5 percent, he says, the worst drop on record “but not terribly different than the 6.1 percent drop in 1975.”

Oh, the dilemmas of the Facebook era. A colleague asks to be your “friend” on the social-networking site, and while you don’t feel you can reject that person’s friendship, you cringe knowing that he or she is now aware that Will Ferrell is your favorite comedian — and knows what you look like in a bikini.

Writing on the Social Citizens blog, Kristin Ivie, an employee with the Case Foundation, describes this conundrum and says, “It feels a little like some social-media tools have been hijacked by the professional world.”

A few years ago, says Ms. Ivie, young people were using Facebook “purely to connect with friends, share pictures and personal interests.” But now that companies and nonprofit groups have recognized the value in social-media sites, she asks, do personal online profiles “need to die?”

“In some ways, I think letting the personal bleed into the professional has a...

Robert Egger, founder of the nonprofit DC Central Kitchen, sat down earlier this week for an hour-and-a-half conversation with 15 of his employees who haven’t yet turned 30.

The meeting was spurred in part by a discussion on a Give and Take post responding to author Dan Pallotta’s assertion that charities need to pay their employees better.

Mr. Egger says on his blog he was struck by how many young people complained in the Chronicle discussion about their poor salaries and lack of influence.

But he was not too worried he would hear similar complaints among his employees: DC Central Kitchen, Mr. Egger says, has worked hard to ensure that the gap between lower- and upper-level employees doesn’t get too large. Nevertheless, he says he learned a lot:

• The young people he met with were “busting with new ideas,” says Mr. Egger. “To be dismissed without a real read is insulting.”
• ...

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal with advice for donors on “smarter giving” got it mostly all wrong, says Saundra Schimmelpfennig, a former nonprofit employee who is writing a book about the failings of foreign aid.

Ms. Schimmelpfennig says on her blog that three questions the article recommends donors ask of charities “perpetuate poor donor practices.”

She says inquiring about a charity’s administrative costs isn’t the right question, because overhead expenses are necessary to help a charity function effectively. Instead, donors should ask for a copy of the nonprofit group’s most recent audit.

The Journal article further suggests asking about a charity’s challenges and...

Epic Change, a charity raising money for a school in Tanzania, is a finalist in one of a mushrooming number of contests that enable Web users to vote for nonprofit groups. But Stacey Monk, its founder, sees a big challenge: the lack of Internet access for would-be voters in Tanzania.

“Many haven’t used the Internet before; most don’t have e-mail accounts; English is a second language,” she writes on the organization’s blog.

Given such obstacles, do Web contests disadvantage charities in places other than the United States and Europe?

Nathaniel Whittemore, who blogs on social entrepreneurship at Change.org, says yes, and he examines some other limitations of online fund-raising contests.

While Mr. Whittemore sees competitions as a positive trend overall, he says they don’t necessarily reward groups that are making the most difference. “To the extent that people are willing ...

A growing number of scholars have documented the different approaches that women take to philanthropy compared with men. Writing on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, Sara Hall of New Philanthropy Advisors, summarizes some of the recent studies and then adds her own thoughts.

Swanee Hunt, a philanthropist and the co-founder of Women Moving Millions, says in a recent article that female donors are more likely to want to build relationships with beneficiaries and other donors.

Alice Eagly of Northwestern University, in a study of how gender differences influence leadership styles, said that women are more likely to want to serve as mentors and coaches, writes Ms. Hall.

Ms. Hall lists six traits she believes characterize female philanthropy. Among them: women often come to their cause through personal experiences; they like to build ties among grant makers, nonprofit groups,...

Saundra Schimmelpfennig, a former aid official, takes aim at a popular target: the fixation in the charity world on administrative costs.

Ms. Schimmelpfennig, who is writing a book on how aid can sometimes cause more harm than good, describes some of the ways that rating charities based on their overhead costs hurts aid work.

Doing a study to investigate a community’s needs before beginning work is expensive — and increases a charity’s administration costs. So charities are reluctant to share needs assessments, because they don’t want to take a financial hit while their competitors do not.

As a result, charities after the 2004 tsunamis either had to pay for their own, duplicative assessments or begin work without determining needs. The consequences? An aid group built an orphanage in a town that had virtually no homeless orphans, whereas in another town four charities competed...

Guidestar, the online repository of financial information on charities, has added a feature highlighting guidebook-style reviews that volunteers and charity clients post on Great Nonprofits. But are the reviews helping or harming donors and nonprofit groups?

Writing on Nonprofit Leadership 601, Heather Carpenter says she’s not thrilled with applying this style of user-created reviews to the nonprofit world.

The comments on Great Nonprofits aren’t reflective of all nonprofit groups, she writes. Only a very small number of charities have been reviewed, and many groups have never even heard of the site (To learn more about Great Nonprofits, see this article from The Chronicle’s archive.).

What’s more, readers might get the wrong impression about a charity from one or two bad reviews. “What if someone had a bad experience at a nonprofit and wrote a mean comment, is that...

Allison Fine, a social-media expert and Chronicle contributor, isn’t thrilled with the details that have begun to emerge about the White House Office of Social Innovation.

On Tuesday, Michelle Obama described the effort this way: “By focusing on high-impact, results-oriented nonprofits, we will ensure that government dollars are spent in a way that is effective, accountable, and worthy of the public trust.”

So what gives Ms. Fine pause?

First, she says on her blog that Ms. Obama’s description sounds an awful lot like the focus of venture philanthropy in the late 1990s on measuring the performance of organizations and trying to grow high-performing groups.

“But the reality is that real social change is too hard to measure in the bite-size pieces that the risk-averse government needs,” Ms. Fine says.

Secondly, she worries about the White House’s emphasis on market-based...

“Why create a foundation in the first place?” asks Lucy Bernholz in a blog post on challenging assumptions about the way grant making is done. “What about creating media platforms, loan funds for advocacy campaigns, or innovation hubs within public agencies?”

Ms. Bernholz, a philanthropy consultant, asks readers to consider: Has society thought about all the alternatives to foundations and traditional grant making? What are the alternatives?

Among the ideas she describes:

• Making small grants to many organizations working on a particular issue, rather than trying to pick a few “potential winners.” That way, she says, “funds support both the organizations and the ecosystems they collectively represent.

• Eliminating duplicative efforts to evaluate charity effectiveness. “As we speak, there are probably dozens of foundation program officers doing similar due diligence on ...