What do poetry, Twitter, and the national debt have in common?

Answer: The Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

In an unusual effort to promote better fiscal health in America, the foundation has asked people to submit haiku poems that shine a literary light on the growing federal debt or their own credit-card bills. The organization displays the entries on a new Web site and sends them out via Twitter.

The short poems follow the traditional Japanese form of five syllables, seven syllables, and five again, and are effective at delivering a message, though they won’t be confused with the words of haiku master Matsuo Basho.

For example:

Spend, borrow, repeat Leave the bills for our children Too young to object

or

Rack up lots of debt Blame bankers for recession Hand out for bailout

Of course, the poems are more enjoyable than the foundation’s other Twitter feed; it simply a...

Should a recent opinion article about how to “fix” the nonprofit world be applauded or trashed?

The Wall Street Journal article by Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership (and a frequent Chronicle contributor), has stirred up a range of reactions.

It has generated more than 50 comments on the newspaper’s Web site. The most contentious of Mr. Eisenberg’s suggestions is that foundations should be required by the government to give more money to charity each year (6 percent of their assets versus the current requirement of 5 percent) and that they should provide more support for “organizations serving the poor, people of color, women and children at risk, gays/lesbians, disabled and troubled youth.”

Some argued that these proposals would hurt donors and that the government should be involved in philanthropy as little a...

Do charity researchers and philanthropists have too cozy a relationship sometimes?

The Fundermentalist blog is examining this question regarding a study released last month by Brandeis University that showed that a Jewish charity that offers free trips to Israel is increasing the number of marriages within the faith.

The study was good news for Taglit-Birthright Israel and its donors, Charles Bronfman, Lynn Schusterman, and Michael Steinhardt, who also paid for the Brandeis research.

The philanthropists used the release of the study to solicit donations for Birthright, writes Jacob Berkman, a reporter with the Jewish Telegraph Agency who writes the blog.

“Does such a coordinated campaign, with the same funders backing the project and the research, risk undermining the credibility of the final study?” he asks.

Len Saxe, the researcher who oversaw the study, told Mr....

Does the nonprofit world need a good laugh?

Humor plays an important role in building identity, yet charities and foundations don’t seem to laugh at themselves very often, writes Gabriela Fitz, co-director of IssueLab, an online publisher of nonprofit research.

Do “we take ourselves too seriously (and then blog about it no less)? Or are we simply concerned that other people won’t take us seriously?” she asks on her group’s blog. “Or is it more evidence that we don’t really have a nonprofit group identity? I mean, a joke really only works when it resonates with the common experience of the audience.”

There are, of course, exceptions. Lolnptech.org makes fun of nonprofit technology, and Philanthropiccrap used to provide a much-needed dose of irreverent humor.

And The Chronicle offers a regular cartoon in its editorial section. That said, more humor is always welcomed.

Ms....

If you find a $20 bill under a potted plant or a few dollars taped to a bench you may need to ask yourself: Is it simply good luck? Or is it a guerrilla gift?

A family in Vancouver, Canada, has created a media buzz with their “guerrilla giving” — leaving envelopes of money and other items at bus stops, in public parks, and other random spots around the city.

On a blog, the father, who prefers to remain anonymous, says he wants to revolutionize philanthropy. For one year, his middle-class family has pledged to give 10 percent of their gross income to strangers. The charitable project “calls into question our ego’s insatiable appetite for self-gratification. It lifts our sights to a higher vision,” he writes.

“We hope we could inspire others that we can all be philanthropists regardless of our income,” the father told the Canwest News Service in a recent article.

On the Web site...

Hildy Gottlieb is fed up with “armchair change agents.”

She writes in response to an opinion article that argues that most nonprofit groups do not demonstrate that they produce social benefits and that donors should be more rigorous in their evaluation of charities.

On her personal blog, Ms. Gottlieb, a charity consultant, says that the push for so-called social investing is a product of the “capacity-building movement,” the “run-like-a-business movement,” and other nonprofit discussions, none of which “has created any change in the circumstances they sought to address.”

After reflecting on the grass-roots activists and charity leaders she assists, she says, “The difference between the work we are doing, and the dictates of the pundits and the ‘movements,’ is that our work is, in fact, work. We are not laying blame and dictating ‘shoulds.’ We are creating change in communities.”...

A new report that urges foundations, universities, and the federal government to support a new model of American journalism is generating a lot of buzz — and some skepticism.

The study, commissioned by Columbia’s journalism school, calls on philanthropies to support local reporting and on the government to ensure the tax code allows news organizations to operate as nonprofit enterprises.

Jim Barnett, a blog writer at the Neiman Journalism Lab, worries about the study’s suggestion that the Internal Revenue Service should establish a new definition in the tax code for nonprofit news efforts.

“The solution, I think, is for the broader nonprofit community to address this issue in a proactive way,” he writes. “Even if it can’t produce a bulletproof definition, it can identify practices and procedures that create a fairly bright line between journalism and advocacy.”

For Rick...

Do most charities fail to show that they create benefits for society?

A foundation consultant argues that point and has stirred up a debate as he calls for more rigorous evaluation of nonprofit groups.

On the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal, David E. K. Hunter, former director of evaluation and knowledge development at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, lays out what he calls “unpleasant truths” about charities.

No. 1 is perhaps the most controversial.

“While nonprofits work incredibly hard, with passion and dedication, and often in incredibly difficult circumstances to solve society’s most intractable problems, there is virtually no credible evidence that most nonprofit organizations actually produce any social value,” he writes.

Because of this problem, he says, donors must embrace “social investing,” which requires a rigorous selection process, as well as...

As President Obama visits New Orleans today, federal support is needed for the community-development efforts that emerged since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, write two grant makers in an opinion article in The Times Picayune.

The new work is “grounded in citizen leadership and philanthropic collaboration,” say James Joseph, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, and Phyllis Taylor, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

They say the disaster has given the city an opportunity to solve often intractable social problems, like failing public schools, poor housing, and blighted neighborhoods. However, for real progress, the two write, more government aid is needed.

“President Obama’s administration has made great strides in removing the bureaucratic barriers slowing recovery,” the write. “Now we...

It seems the nonprofit world is getting some conflicting advice when it comes to marketing.

Joe Ippolito, an entrepreneur who is starting a “social venture,” says that nonprofit groups need to respond to how donors are changing and focus more on the “design and branding” of their causes.

“Love it or hate it, you are selling a product: your cause,” he writes on his blog for Good magazine. “And while helping change the world is certainly more valuable (and, hopefully, more gratifying) than buying a toaster, you’re fighting for the consumers’ attention nonetheless, and you’re battling for their trust.”

He continues: “Everything from the literature to the letterhead of your organization needs to play a role in conveying that your cause is professional and worthwhile, and maybe even cool.”

But according to some marketing and fund-raising experts, such branding efforts are...