Learning from another’s mistakes is surely less painful than learning from one’s own. Alanna Shaikh, a global-health expert, tries to save readers of her blog from some regrettable on-the-job missteps by describing five mistakes says she made in pursuit of her dream job.

What decisions does she rue?

For starters, not paying adequate attention “to who I worked for.” She says: “I once took a job solely on the basis of the big title, without paying enough attention to the corporate culture or the quality of the project we were implementing.”

She also says she set her career sights too low. “It was once my career goal to be a country director, and once I got that job, at 27, I had no idea what to aim for next,” recalls Ms. Shaikh. “Now my career goals are based on ideas, not titles,” she says. “I want work that has meaning for me, at an organization that values innovation. Beyond...

To educate donors, charities often share stories about people served by their organizations. But Holden Karnofsky writes on the GiveWell blog that those stories rarely provide much insight into whether or not the organizations are doing good work.

“Charities share a small number of stories without being clear about how these stories were selected, which implies to me that charities select the best and most favorable stories they could be telling,” says Mr. Karnofsky.

One “semi-exception,” he says, is the group Interplast’s blog, which “has such a constant flow of stories that I feel it has assisted my understanding of Interplast’s activities.”

Mr. Karnofsky asks: Why aren’t there more charity blogs like this one?

“A charity that was clear, systematic, and transparent before the fact about which videos, pictures, and stories it intended to capture (or that simply posted so...

“As someone with an interest in both the domestic and international dimensions of poverty, I’m struck by the sometimes limited crossover and dialogue between people working on the issue here and those working abroad,” writes Tony Pipa, a consultant to nonprofit groups, on the PhilanTopic blog.

He says it’s painful to hear politicians say there’s no comparison and to watch the leaders of international charities agree.

Mr. Pipa says he’s worried about the growth of “a sort of development protectionism,” where pressure builds to send money to local, rather than international, causes. At the same time, the nonprofit consultant says he’s bothered by a “moral high-handedness” on the part of some people who work in international development. They may sometimes suggest that living in a refugee camp or on less than a dollar a day is fundamentally different than being poor in the United...

What happens if Sudan’s government allows aid groups back into Darfur, but only if they accept new restrictions on their work?

So asks Michael Kleinman on his Change.org blog about humanitarian relief.

Should aid organizations allow the government to have say over whom they hire and fire? How much they pay? How they design and carry out their programs?

Humanitarian charities have an imperative to help needy people, writes Mr. Kleinman, but they also strive to be neutral and impartial. And it’s pretty difficult to be impartial, he says, if a government demands near-total control over a group’s operations.

To a large extent, of course, the Sudanese government already does demand control over charities’ work in Darfur. Mr. Kleinman points readers to an anonymous aid worker blogging for Reuters Alertnet, who recounts how Sudan has seized all the group’s assets and required that...

What will global warming mean for relief and development groups?

A lot more work, according to a new report from Oxfam.

Each year, nearly 250 million people are affected by natural disasters, Oxfam says. Of those, 98 percent are victims of climate-related disasters, such as droughts or floods, as opposed to earthquakes. By 2015, that number could grow to 375 million people per year.

While those numbers certainly aren’t exact, they do suggest that climate change and environmental mismanagement will leave more people vulnerable to disasters. Environmental changes could also increase the potential for new conflicts over resources, which could also mean that more people will be displaced and need aid, says Oxfam.

So, what can be done to try to reduce climate change’s wallop?

David Waskow, climate-change program director at Oxfam America, writes on the Grist magazine blog:...

Problems, not their proposed solutions, inspire people to give, writes Holden Karnofsky on the GiveWell blog. And, he says, that’s not necessarily a good thing for philanthropy.

Consider the example of a charity called Project AK-47. The group writes compellingly on its Web site about the plight of child soldiers, says Mr. Karnofsky, and makes an emotional plea that a $7 donation can make a difference in the children’s lives.

But, at least from looking at the group’s Web site, Mr. Karnofsky says he can’t really determine what it does to help.

Too many charities are like this, he says, and too many donors want to support causes they’re most passionate about or problems they find most troublesome, regardless of whether good ways to help exist.

But, he says, donors’ powers to produce change are quite limited. He writes: “This creates a fundamentally different challenge from...

In this economy, is it worth it to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to attend conferences? Lucy Bernholz, writing on Philanthropy 2173, has a list of three conferences she says are still very much worth attending.

First, there’s next week’s Global Philanthropy Forum, in Washington. The event, organized by Jane Wales, an Aspen Institute vice president, is worth going as much for the audience as for keynote speakers like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, says Ms. Bernholz. It brings together donors and social investors with social entrepreneurs from around the world. (To get a previous of the conference, read the transcript of our live discussion on Thursday with Ms. Wales.)

Two conferences in late May are also well worth the travel costs, writes Ms. Bernholz. They are: Netsquared, a gathering on technology innovation in the nonprofit world, and Games4Change Festival,...

Rick Cohen, former head of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, has a long list on his Nonprofit Quarterly blog about the advocacy mistakes he sees charities making.

The worst thing charities can do, he says, is “transform into uncritical handmaiden of the handful of insiders who have grabbed the ‘nonprofit expert’ roles in the new administration, rather than doing what the nonprofit sector should always do, which is stand apart, critique, mobilize the communities we represent, and demand social justice.”

But Mr. Cohen notes that there are big differences among the country’s charities, and those advocating on their behalf.

As findings from a forthcoming study by Nonprofit Quarterly will show, some of the “best funded and most effective infrastructure organizations tend to promote the interests of the larger players in the nonprofit sector, leaving small nonprofits...

Aid officials, journalists, and governments have been sounding the alarm about the consequences of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s decision last month to oust from Darfur 13 relief organizations.

Michael Kleinman, a former aid worker and a blogger for Change.org, has been among those writing and talking about how the humanitarian situation in Darfur will fall apart without the groups’ assistance.

But he’s now asking on his blog, What if things don’t, actually, get any worse?

“The situation in some areas has certainly deteriorated,” he says. “But all in all it wasn’t the Darfuri end of days.”

“I still do think the situation will get worse – but, at the same time, beginning to admit that I have no idea,” Mr. Kleinman continues. “Maybe it won’t. Maybe the heroic efforts of the U.N. and other NGOs to fill the gap will actually work.”

And he wonders what, if conditions in...

If you could start a new charity program, what would it be?

For Alanna Shaikh, an expert in global health who blogs at Blood and Milk, such a dream effort would focus exclusively on solving the easiest problems around the world, the “low-hanging fruit in relief and development.”

“There are a million little ideas we all run into, that don’t fit with any expressed donor priorities, but would so obviously make a useful difference in the world,” she writes. “LHF [Low Hanging Fruit] would work on those. We’d document everything to pieces, so it would also serve as research on what works.”

The project’s focus on simple solutions would probably make it an easier sell to donors, she writes. “A Hippo roller or better irrigation is an easy sell, and easy to illustrate in photographs.”

“I’m not arguing that these kinds of quick fixes are the answer to the world’s problems; far from it,” ...