The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation saw its assets tumble by 20 percent last year.

Nathaniel Whittemore, blogging at Change.org, says maybe it’s time for the grant maker to consider investing in ways that advance its mission of improving people’s well being worldwide.

The Gates Foundation hasn’t warmed to mission-related investing, instead choosing to invest its assets in companies that its advisers think can have the highest returns. Proponents of the Gates’s approach tend to think that mission-related investing isn’t all that influential — “that the resources are simply too disbursed and that corporations who meet the social impact cut are probably just gaming the system any way,” says Mr. Whittemore.

“But if the Gates Foundation takes those cynical views — particularly that the resources they have are too small to make a difference in the financial markets — then what the ...

What is the silliest critique of social entrepreneurship? That just because there already may be too many nonprofit groups, someone with a great idea and the ability to deliver on it shouldn’t start another one.

Nathaniel Whittemore, director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, writes on Change.org that of course it is important that someone who starts a charity be able to lead it effectively. He says he agrees that “students shouldn’t just naively jump into starting their own nonprofits.”

But Mr. Whittemore says that “the thing that drives me absolutely nuts about the ‘we don’t need more nonprofits’ line is that it contains an embedded argument that because the field is congested now, somehow new entrants aren’t welcome.”

He wonders: Just because there may be many ineffective charities that linger because a donor or two agree with their mission, does...

What do NASA, the “Mad Men” character Peggy Olson, and the charity Athletes for a Cure have in common?

They were each recipients of the inaugural “Shorty Awards,” a contest co-sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to recognize the best items on the Web site Twitter.

Alberto Ibargüen, the foundation’s president, addressed people attending the award ceremony in New York last night via Twitter, which enables users to communicate through 140-character messages.

Winners and nominees included:

- Carrie Bugbee, a public-relations executive in Portland, who “tweets” as Peggy Olson, the rising copywriter in the AMC TV series Mad Men.

Who do you think deserves recognition for their Tweeting?

Nathaniel Whittemore, who blogs about social entrepreneurship at Change.org, often returns to the same piece of advice for his unemployed friends: Try blogging.

So why does he think blogging can help advance a career?

First, because finding things to blog about requires building your expertise on a range of topics.

Second, blogging helps a person determine his or her interests. Mr. Whittemore says that “this blog has definitely helped me affirm which pieces of the wider world of social enterprise I’m most excited about.”

Blogging can also help you become an authoritative voice in your field, he says, assuming what you write is interesting and of value to others.

And fourth, blogging provides an “excuse to network.” He says that, “as you become a voice in the field, it gives you a great context to e-mail or LinkedIn the brightest thinkers in your field, or the most...

Martin Kearns, the founder of a nonprofit environmental organization, has started a Wikipedia-style effort to help advocacy groups and other charities weather the recession.

Mr. Kearns begins the entry by telling readers that “we should all begin to operate with new assumptions.”

He says that money going into advocacy will decline by at least 20 percent, and perhaps by as much as 50 percent. “The progressive advocacy movement in 2010 will look very different from the movement at the end of 2008,” he writes.

The dissolution of the movement will not take place in predictable or sensible ways, he writes. Large, effective groups may fail, and less effective ones may survive. Connections among organizations will wither, and “a sustained effort to repair and reconnect these threads will be required,” Mr. Kearns says.

The deepening economic crisis will also fuel a move toward...

Defenders of Wildlife is receiving a lot of attention for a new online video it produced about threats to Alaska’s environment.

The reason? Sparring between the ad’s spokeswoman, the actress Ashley Judd, and its target, Gov. Sarah Palin, who is condemned in the video for a state policy permitting the aerial hunting of wolves.

“Back in Alaska, Palin is again casting aside science and championing the slaughter of wildlife,” Ms. Judd says in the video, as a gunman leans out of a helicopter to shoot a wolf running on the snowy ground below. “Palin even proposed a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf … It is time to stop Sarah Palin and stop this senseless savagery.”

The video is part of a new campaign by Defenders of Wildlife, called Eye on Palin.

Ms. Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, lashed back in a statement, saying “these audacious...

In a recession, it’s almost foolish not to use every tool at your disposal to job hunt. On weapon that many people don’t use — or don’t use effectively, is the social-networking site LinkedIn, writes Guy Kawasaki on his blog, How to Change the World.

At the top of Mr. Kawasaki’s 10 tips: “Get the word out.” Change your “status updates” on LinkedIn to show that you’re in the hunt, he says.

Then ask friends and colleagues to write you recommendations. “A strong recommendation from your manager highlights your strengths and shows that you were a valued employee,” writes Mr. Kawasaki. “This is especially helpful if you were recently laid off, and there is no better time to ask for this than when your manager is feeling bad because she laid you off.”

He advises using the site’s advanced search function to find companies where people with your skills and background are working....

Jeff Trexler, a professor of social entrepreneurship at Pace University, writes on the blog JustMeans that there aren’t enough books that can provide students with a good introduction to the subject. Much of the literature on social entrepreneurship tends to be too uncritical, he says.

But Mr. Trexler notes two new books that are exceptions. First is Arthur C. Brooks’s Social Entrepreneurship: A Modern Approach to Social Value, which Mr. Trexler says “blends solid strategic advice from entrepreneurial practice with real-world examples from charitable businesses.”

The second book is the Urban Institute’s new collection on Nonprofits and Business. Mr. Trexler’s says the collection of essays looks at new trends, laws, and best practices.

Are there other books on social entrepreneurship that would suggest?

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, has a blog post about the Madoff scandal’s impact on foundations. The post includes a link to a list that a friend of his (Daniel E. Smith, president of Benefit Technology) compiled for Mr. Kristof.

The 14-page list includes the names of 147 foundations who had at least some of their money wiped out by Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Mr. Kristof notes that, interestingly, Mr. Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew, did not invest their philanthropic dollars with their father. They also used big accounting firms.

By contrast, most of the foundations on the list shared the same accounting firms, which tended to be small. Mr. Kristof wonders if the accountants should have been looking more skeptically at the kinds of trades supposedly done by Mr. Madoff.

He also says the philanthropic world should “wonder if there aren’t more Madoffs out...

Alanna Skaikh, an expert on global-health issues, says that international-development and aid work is stuck in a “culture of nice.” Writing on her blog Blood and Milk, she says that a reluctance to label shoddy programs and poor-performing organizations as “bad” keeps bad programs from being cut and good ones from being improved.

So why are people who have no problem calling out a “bad” product — she cites Windows Vista — unable to stomach outing poor charitable projects?

One reason, according to Ms. Shaikh, is that when good people are trying to serve others, it’s difficult to point out that they’re not doing the best job of it. Also, every project benefits at least one or two people. And she says that no one wants to be the person who says that handful of individuals aren’t worth the effort.

Also, charity employees tend to move around among different jobs and organizations. ...