How does an international aid group assist needy people overseas without becoming a de facto arm of the local government?

Very carefully, writes Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, in Oxford, England.

On The International Herald Tribune’s Managing Globalization blog, Mr. Hobbs discusses the role — and risks — of the relationship charities have with the often weak governments of poor nations where they operate.

Answering questions submitted by readers, Mr. Hobbs writes that nongovernmental organizations “should not seek to replace the provision of services which governments have a duty to provide. NGO’s should complement this provision; it’s a fine and crucial difference.”

In response to another question, Mr. Hobbs writes that Oxfam and other organizations face another challenge: answering to the beneficiaries of their aid.

“NGO’s need to keep improving...

Should nonprofit groups worry about the potential for bad mouthing if they offer an online option for people to post comments? Not at all, says Jeff Brooks, creative director for an advertising agency serving nonprofit groups, at Donor Power Blog

Mr. Brooks points out that the retailing giant Amazon freely allows people to post reviews, pro or con, on all the products they sell. “They’ve discovered that giving people a place to talk helps sell stuff,” Mr. Brooks says. “More than that, the bad reviews often stir up passionate counter-reviews.”

Mr. Brooks figures it’s time to acknowledge that we don’t “live in a bubble” anymore. And the best way to defend your group against negative comments might be to stay quiet and let someone else “leap to your defense,” he says.

“Why not encourage conversation, and brave the inevitable negatives?” Mr. Brooks concludes. “Make it easy, fun, and...

Blogs that focus on Central America are buzzing about news of a high-profile court battle over a $50-million donation, reportedly the largest in Panama’s history.

According to Time magazine, Wilson (Chuck) Lucom, an American millionaire who died last year at age 88, left the money to benefit Panama’s needy children. He did not specify which nonprofit groups would be supported, reported the magazine.

But Time writes that Mr. Lucom’s wife and other members of her family, which is one of the wealthiest and most politically connected in the country, is disputing the contribution in court, arguing that the tax lawyer in charge of the will fabricated the charity bequest to split the millions of dollars between himself and other associates of Mr. Lucom. The lawyer has denied the accusation.

Two Panamanian courts have dismissed the wife’s claims, and now the nation’s Supreme Court is set ...

A Boston Globe article critical of social marketing — charity efforts to advertise and sell mosquito nets and other health products — is being questioned by a leading advocate of the practice on his blog.

The newspaper cited two recent studies that say that whilet social marketers believe in charging a minimal cost to show the products’ value, the fees actually lower the number of needy people who use the beneficial items.

But R. Craig Lefebvre, chief technical officer at Population Services International, a Washington group that is a strong proponent of social marketing, writes that the article deals with abstract issues, not practical ones.

If nonprofit groups were to forgo the income they receive as part of social marketing, “I wonder where all the resources will come from and what the trade-offs would be,” he writes on his blog, On Social Marketing and Social Change. “We...

Should the board member of a charity write a blog?

That question is being raised after last week’s decision by the trustees of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board to suspend one of its members for, essentially, writing critiques of the organization on his personal blog.

The Richmond, Va., group, which oversees the Southern Baptist Convention’s missionary and relief work abroad, temporarily suspended a trustee, Wade Burleson, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., for violating the trustees’ code of conduct, reported the Baptist Press.

The censure motion said Mr. Burleson failed to follow rules that trustees “refrain from public criticism of board-approved actions” and “scrupulously avoid either the fact or the appearance” of having disclosed information or private conversations from board meetings, according to the Press.

Since 2005, Mr. Burleson has...

Efforts by organizations such as Save Darfur and by celebrities such as George Clooney that call for an end to the killings in the Darfur-region of Sudan may be hurting the work of relief and refugee groups, writes Ruth Gidley on her blog on AlertNet, a Web site that discusses humanitarian causes.

The advocacy work has certainly raised the public’s understanding of the problems in the African country. “But despite the global attention now devoted to the plight of Darfur, aid agencies in the field say the actions of the advocacy groups have triggered internal policy rifts and external resentments that have created significant operational complications,” she writes.

For example, aid groups have been asked to sign public statements with human-rights groups and others condemning the Sudanese government or requesting the intervention of United Nations peacekeepers. Fund raisers within...

The Capital Research Center, a think tank in Washington, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, in Philadelphia, are butting heads over what the philanthropic goals were of Pew’s founders.

Martin Morse Wooster, senior fellow at the center who has written a book about the intentions of wealthy donors, argues that the Pew nonprofit organization has violated the conservative pro-business values of Joseph N. Pew and J. Howard Pew, who started the group. After the two died, he wrote, “the funds they created were taken over by people who did not share their values and beliefs and had no ties to them.”

Not so, responds Rebecca W. Rimel, Pew’s chief executive officer.

In a letter posted on the center’s blog, Ms. Rimel writes, “If Mr. Wooster had done his homework, he would know that the chairman of the Pew board is J. Howard Pew II. His brother, J.N. Pew IV, MD, is also a director. In fact,...

Are the victims of the California wildfires benefiting from the lessons America learned in its botched response to Hurricane Katrina?

Peter Apps, who writes a blog on AlertNet, a Web site on humanitarian causes and disaster relief, says the answer is yes.

“Inevitably, comparisons are being made to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans — and so far they’re mostly favorable,” he writes. “Many newspapers contrast conditions in San Diego’s main stadium, where evacuees can speak to counselors or even get a massage, with the apocalyptic scenes in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, where bathrooms overflowed and dead bodies were left outside.”

Charities are also applying what they learned from Katrina. For example, the American Red Cross, which has raised $20-million to help people made homeless by the fires, is using the crisis to test partnerships it set up in the...

Philip Cubeta—who describes himself on his blog Gift Hub as the “morals tutor to America’s wealthiest families”—argues there’s no need to pit “big liberal foundations” against “small religious organizations” in a quest to revive grass-roots civic engagement.

Mr. Cubeta, who works for a financial-services firm in Dallas, says William Schambra did just that in an opinion piece that appears in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Mr. Schambra heads a philanthropy program at the conservative Hudson Institute, and Mr. Cubeta detected a whiff of partisanship in his opinion article, which praised President Bush’s efforts to promote small and religious-oriented charities.

“I think this issue of community, and really of democracy, unites people from all walks of life, and all across the political spectrum,” he says he wrote to Mr. Schambra in an e-mail message. “I wonder if ...

The American Red Cross has won a victory over a “typosquatter” — someone who used a variation on the group’s Web address to try to attract traffic, reports Domain Dispute & Trademark Blog.

The National Arbitration Forum, an organization that rules on disputes outside of courtrooms, determined that the Red Cross could block the other operator from using the domain name redcrosss.org — identical to the Red Cross’s own address except for an additional “s” at the end.

People who spelled the Red Cross address with an extra “s” were directed to a site selling commercial products related to disaster relief.

The arbitration panel ruled that the operators of that site — identified only as “Ms MDM” — had no legitimate interest in using a “confusingly similar” domain name.

Ms MDM did not respond to the Red Cross’s complaint, but is bound by the decision because it agreed to follow...