An ad campaign to get more men to be tested for prostate cancer has thrown its celebrity spokesman “under the bus,” according to one blog writer.

The campaign, which was paid for by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and promotes the work of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and other charities, features the tennis star John McEnroe.

On its Web site and in other material, the campaign states that Glaxo paid for and helped develop the marketing effort and that it paid Mr. McEnroe for his involvement.

Paul Robert Jones, a marketing consultant in Salt Lake City, questions the move.

He doesn’t object to Mr. McEnroe being compensated, though he says it’d be preferable if the athlete volunteered, and he says he supports transparency in cause-marketing. But the campaign should not have included the pay statement in its ads.

“Putting that disclosure at the bottom of the ad, to me, ...

Should people support higher-education institutions like Harvard University with billion-dollar endowments?

Randy Cohen, author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, says donors should split their giving.

Given the wealth disparity between Harvard and other colleges, particularly ones that primarily serve poor and minority students, Mr. Cohen recommends that Americans who are inclined to make a contribution to Harvard should give half of their donation to it and the rest to less well-off institutions.

“We’ll experiment with the proportions to find the sweet spot that aids the most students while discouraging the fewest donors,” he writes. “This reform need not be written into law. It should be accepted voluntarily by every donor and embraced by every university with a substantial endowment and a concern for an egalitarian society.”

Several readers disagreed...

A debate has erupted over whether the almost $1-million compensation for the chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is justified.

A new Chronicle survey shows that Jeffrey S. Raikes, who joined the Seattle fund last year, is earning a $990,000 annual salary, the largest compensation for the 49 foundation leaders included in the study.

The authors of Philanthrocapitalism, Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, argue on their blog that Mr. Raikes’s pay may cause some “huffing and puffing” but that it is well deserved. The nonprofit world should be able to reward talented leaders, they argue.

“The tendency to judge nonprofit management by the scratchiness of their hair shirts (on the basis that paying decent salaries is a ‘waste’ of precious charitable donations that should be going to the beneficiaries) is widespread,” they write. “Yet this is a dangerous canard.”...

As part of an effort to create a broad discussion about the future of the nonprofit world, Independent Sector has created a new Web site.

The organization, which is a Washington association of about 600 charities and grant makers, is asking: What will — or should — philanthropy and nonprofit groups look like in 2020?

On its new Web site, FutureLab, people can suggest ideas, join ongoing discussions, or vote on which concepts are the best. Independent Sector will summarize the highlights and distribute them to foundations and charities.

FutureLab may smooth tensions that arose this summer when the association held an invitation-only meeting in Colorado. The event, which included 75 people, came under fire by some nonprofit leaders who said it failed to have a diverse range of viewpoints.

What do you think of FutureLab?

What do President Obama, Matt Damon, and the chief executive of Wal-Mart have in common?

They’ll all be at next week’s Clinton Global Initiative, the annual philanthropy meeting organized by former President Bill Clinton.

Some people have derided it as a celebrity schmooze fest. But Nathaniel Whittemore, the director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, says on his blog that the event has become an important place for nonprofit officials to rub shoulders with Fortune 500 CEO’s, government leaders, and — yes — Ashton Kutcher.

The Chronicle will be providing daily updates about the event on its Conference Notebook.

This year’s meeting will include discussions about how to help women and girls in impoverished countries, how former business executives can make the transition to the nonprofit world, and ways to bring more financial opportunities to poor...

AT&T’s announcement that it would sponsor a new arts center in Dallas is raising a lot of criticism in the arts world.

This week the company announced it would support the center, to be renamed the AT&T Performing Arts Center, reports The Dallas Morning News. But Mark Nerenhausen, chief executive of the center, declined to tell the newspaper how much the company was giving.

Judith H. Dobrzynski, a blog writer for Arts Journal, questions the decision to keep it quiet.

“How are people going to judge whether this is a fair deal or whether AT&T bargained too hard?” she asks. “And how are AT&T shareholders going to know whether they’re getting their money’s worth?”

Another blog author speculates that the telecommunications corporation does not want to appear like it is flaunting a big donation during a recession.

“One insider tells us the reticence is not surprising, given the ...

The editors of Chi-Town Daily News have helped pioneer nonprofit journalism, but now they say they must abandon the charity model.

The Chicago group, which has received substantial support from foundations, including more than $400,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, couldn’t raise enough money to provide “comprehensive local coverage,” writes Geoff Dougherty, Chi-Town’s editor, on the online newspaper’s blog.

“The Daily News needs $1-million to $2-million per year to do a great job of covering a city as sprawling and complex as Chicago,” he says. “And despite hundreds of phone calls and letters to foundations, corporations, and individual donors over the past four years, we’ve never come close to that.”

Mr. Dougherty says the editorial team will start a for-profit news site and other nonprofit groups may take over Chi-Town’s Web site and neighborhood reporting...

Has a charity effort to get low-cost computers to children in developing countries failed?

Alanna Shaikh, a veteran aid worker, says the work of One Laptop per Child has not achieved its educational goals.

On UN Dispatch, a blog about the United Nations, which has assisted the laptop project, she writes that the program was hampered because the charity did not provide adequate tech support and did not train teachers on how to integrate the devices into their classes.

“It’s time to call a spade a spade,” she writes. “OLPC was a failure.”

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, disagrees.

The group has distributed 1 million computers to children in 31 countries, he says in a response to Ms. Shaikh. While the program has run into obstacles, he attributes them to “commercial interests” and the news media publishing “stories like yours.”

“In spite of all that,...

The daughter of a former foundation leader has waded into one of the most dicey debates in the nonprofit world: whether to evaluate charities based on their overheard costs.

Sandy Stonesifer, the daughter of Patty Stonesifer, who used to lead the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ponders the question in her philanthropy advice column in Slate magazine.

She points out the various ways charity watchdogs and others weigh administrative expenses, but ultimately she questions the approach.

“Looking at a charity’s financial information is great, helpful even, but it doesn’t give you the full picture,” she writes. “You wouldn’t base a financial investment solely on a company’s overhead, would you?”

Her advice: “Use the financial information for what it is worth—an easy indicator of an organization’s financial health and expenditures—but don’t let it alone determine how you donate.”

...

Two blog writers are criticizing an online quiz created by Charity Navigator.

On its Web site, the charity watchdog group in Mahwah, N.J., asks 12 questions about the nonprofit world.

But Bill Huddleston, a fund-raising consultant in Virginia, says the test has a misleading question regarding charity compensation.

Question No. 7 asks what is the “average charity chief’s annual compensation” and provides three choices: $158,000; $58,000; and $580,000.

Charity Navigator says the correct response is $158,000. But that figure is based on the watchdog group’s survey of 5,400 of the country’s largest charities, which earn quite a bit more than the average charity leader, argues Mr. Huddleston.

He says the answer will give the wrong impression to donors.

People will think, “‘The average nonprofit CEO earns $158,000, that’s four times what a police officer earns and five times...