A New York Times opinion article about how philanthropists should save newspapers made Allison Fine want to throw her paper back out into the snow.

Ms. Fine, an expert on nonprofit technology and communications and the host of the Chronicle‘s Social Good podcast, writes on her blog that endowing newspapers and giving them nonprofit status is a “stupid idea.”

She takes issue with the article’s premise that because the Internet, in the words of Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, has the potential to be a “cesspool” of misinformation, print newspapers must be saved.

Of course false information is available online, says Ms. Fine, but it also survives on television, the radio, and in many print publications. That doesn’t mean that many bloggers and Web journalists aren’t doing a good job of exposing truths and providing accurate information.

She also finds fault with the...

Kelly Kleiman thinks it’s a great thing that some foundations plan to give more than they are required to by law in response to the economic crisis. But she’d like to see them also make public how much more they plan to give.

Writing at The Nonprofiteer, Ms. Kleiman, a lawyer and nonprofit consultant, says she was encouraged by the George Gund Foundation’s recent announcement that it would spend more than 5 percent of its assets in 2009.

But, she writes, “the foundation’s language on the subject can almost be described as ‘weaselly.’” In the announcement, the foundation says that while it will spend more than 5 percent, “because our portfolio is diminished, the dollars available for grants will still likely decline in 2009. Thus, we do not expect to make any large new commitments.”

Ms. Kleiman wonders why the foundation isn’t saying what percentage it plans to give. She says ...

The last week-and-a-half has underscored the dangerous conditions in which aid employees work: Two relief workers have been killed in Somalia during that time, and another two in Gaza.

But despite the sometimes deadly working environment for many charity employees overseas, few seem to receive security training, writes Michael Kleinman, a consultant to nonprofit groups who blogs at Change.org.

Mr. Kleinman asked some friends who were either working, or had worked, in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and the West Bank and Gaza about the training they had received. He says that almost none had received security training before going overseas, and about half had received safety training or a briefing upon their arrival in the country.

And Mr. Kleinman says that, if anything, those numbers underestimate the problem. All his friends were international staff members; employees hired...

Michael Kleinman, a consultant to aid groups who blogs at Change.org, weighs in on a restrictions imposed on relief organizations imposed earlier this week by the Ethiopian government.

The law bans international aid groups from certain kinds of work, including human rights, children’s rights and the rights of disabled people, conflict resolution, and criminal-justice issues.

Ethiopian nonprofit groups that receive more than 10 percent of their money from abroad are also barred from working in those areas.

The Ethiopian parliament says the new law is aimed at preventing foreign interference in Ethiopian issues, a contention Mr. Kleinman finds absurd.

“[A]fter all,” he writes, it’s hard to think of anything more threatening than children’s rights, let alone the rights of the disabled.”

Human Rights Watch says in a press release that the new law is “part of a broader trend...

Israel agreed on Wednesday to a three-hour “humanitarian truce” to allow aid workers and supplies to reach civilians in Gaza. But some advocacy and relief groups are saying the truce is not enough to deliver aid.

Writing on the Amnesty International blog, Zahir Janmohamed asks whether the truce is, in fact, a “farce.” Mr. Janmohamed quotes an official with the United Nations: “When you are trying to feed 750,000 people a day in Gaza as we are, you need a permanent cease fire. You can’t do that in a three-hour window.”

In a press release on its Web site, Save the Children says the three-hour cease fire has brought little relief to families in Gaza. While families can leave their homes during the temporary cease fire, most are afraid to do so, the charity says.

Some groups, such as Oxfam, are asking supporters to urge President Bush to seek an immediate cease fire. The charity is...

Is it too expensive for small foundations to undertake the due diligence necessary that would have protected them from falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme? Jack Siegel, writing at Charity Governance, doesn’t think so.

In response to a query from a reader of his blog, Mr. Siegel provides a list of low-cost steps family foundations can take to avoid losing money with an unscrupulous investor.

First, people with relatively modest assets, in comparison to other wealthy donors, should reconsider the decision to set up a foundation. If the costs of maintaining a foundation are too high in comparison to assets, than perhaps it’s a better choice to create a fund with a community foundation or a donor-advised fund, writes Mr. Siegel.

Family-foundation leaders also need to understand how their money is invested. No matter how trendy an investor, if he or she can’t explain ...

With its revamped home page and e-mail, Google has given users the chance to highlight their favorite charities — and, perhaps, to help them raise some money.

Writing on the Google.org blog, Marissa Mayer, a vice president, and Michaela Prescott, senior product marketing manager, explain that people can now feature a banner of a charity on their customized home page.

Each banner, or “theme,” has a link that allows viewers to donate to the organization.

Charities that Google is working with include Ashoka, Doctors Without Borders, Heifer International, Oxfam America, and Save the Children.

However, at least one Gmail user is taking issue with the company’s selection of charities.

“It’s amazing how left wing the entire group of ‘Themes for Causes’ really is,” writes one user on a Gmail help discussion. “Let’s have some suggestions for those of us who aren’t on the Left...

The number of charities will shrink, but the ranks of socially-driven businesses will swell. Charitable giving will drop, but at least 30 percent of the year’s biggest gifts will come from people outside the United States. And, new corporate structures, such as “B Corporations” and L3Cs, will be written into the law.

So predicts Lucy Bernholz in a blog post on the outlook for philanthropy in 2009.

In the post, Ms. Bernholz also looks back at her predictions from last year. Among them: one of the philanthropic prizes will solve a social problem (she says she was wrong on that one); half the magazines dedicated to philanthropy that were created in the past few years will fold (she was right); and at least one-third, if not one-half of the 10 biggest donations will come from non-Americans (she says we don’t have the data to assess whether she was correct).

Ms. Bernholz also says...

Writing on his blog at the Nonprofit Quarterly, Rick Cohen says the nonprofit world needs a new way to measure foundations and their grant making.

“Our understanding of foundations is faulty, because we lump all different kinds of foundations together in our analysis of their grant making and spending practices, like a ball of string or rubber bands,” he says.

Mr. Cohen says the nonprofit world suffers from “misplaced aggregation.” For example, foundations that are spending all their assets in a set time, and those led by living donors who tend to give more, are calculated together with traditional foundations that rarely give above legally required annual payment of 5 percent of assets per year.

That means statistics like one calculated by the Foundation Center, which says “independent foundations” distributed 6.1 percent of assets last year, makes foundations look more...

Can development projects in a poor country have too many donors?

If the donors are not working well together, then yes, says Neil Squires, a human-development adviser in Mozambique with the British Department for International Development.

Mr. Squires writes on the agency’s blog that Mozambique is a “donor darling,” a reflection both of the great needs and the government’s transparency.

But, “whilst being a donor darling brings the benefit of increased funding, it also brings the challenge of coordinating large amounts of donors,” writes Mr. Squires.

His blog post includes a pie chart showing the many donors who support improvements in health in Mozambique. Financial support from foreign donors in 2008 was $147-million, about the same as the funds provided by the Mozambique government.

One of the biggest donors is the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria. While ...