The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation is using the World Cup tournament as an opportunity to raise awareness about inequality in South Africa through an event-driven blog, Beyond the Games.

The foundation, in Flint, Mich., is using a team of guest bloggers from South Africa, which is hosting the event, to contribute posts about conditions in the country that coincide with the four-week tournament.

In one recent post, Ela Gandhi, a granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi and a former member of South Africa's parliament, openly questions whether the event can bring social and economic value to South Africans.

Ms. Ghandi, editor of Satyagraha, notes that some South Africans have sacrificed their livelihoods to accommodate the games and others have benefited from the tournament. She questions whether the games will create a stronger unity within the country.

"[South Africans] need to forge a broad,...

The Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation's recent involvement in the Pepsi Refresh Contest has drawn criticism from supporters of an Illinois elementary school who claim Kanzius gathered votes in a way that defied the contest's rules.

After voting closes at midnight tonight, Pepsi will choose two top contestants that come up with the best ideas on how to improve their neighborhoods, towns, or cities, and award them each a $250,000 grant.

Benld Elementary School was in the top two slots for about a month. But now at the top is the Erie cancer charity Kanzius, which came from its ranking at 100th place to land in first, creating suspicion among competitors.

Mark Cunningham, a Benld parent, said in an article by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that some people gathering votes for Kanzius have asked supporters to set up 100 or more e-mail addresses and to vote from each of them daily. He noted the...

As part of The Christian Science Monitor's conversion from a daily printed newspaper to a weekly online one, the publication is also working to wean itself from its publisher -- the Church of Christ, Scientist -- over the next five years. And the lessons it is learning may have value for other nonprofit organizations seeking to evolve in a rapidly changing landscape.

During an interview with Jim Barnett, a former newspaper reporter, John Yemma, the Monitor's editor, says the first order of business has to be to move toward sustainability. He adds that when newsrooms rely too heavily on their parent organizations for subsidies, the news operation is put in jeopardy. 

The Monitor received $12.6-million in subsidies this past fiscal year and is projecting a subsidy of $10.7-million in the upcoming fiscal year. The publication's revenue is also generated from subscriptions, advertising,...

Mobile text giving, if used improperly, could result in the loss of committed donors for anonymous, one-time, low-dollar gifts, Jeff Brooks, a nonprofit consultant, writes in a column for this month's FundRaising Success magazine.

The American Red Cross raised around $30-million in text-message gifts in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, prompting a surge of nonprofit groups, large and small, to quickly begin text-to-give fund-raising efforts.

Mr. Brooks says that, although text giving has its benefits in that it is a quick way to raise funds, those funds are being given by young people who are not yet donors and unlikely to make future contributions.

"If you pushed just one person to give via mobile who otherwise would have given by any other medium, you lost a rather large bunch of money," says Mr. Brooks. "I have to wonder how many of those 300,000-some text donations that went to...

The Connecticut Health Foundation has formed a new partnership with the Society for New Communications Research to develop a social media project designed to motivate the public to take a stronger interest in the racial and ethnic disparities in the health-care system.

Elizabeth Myung Sook Krause, a senior program officer for the Connecticut Health Foundation, will oversee the project. She discusses it in detail with Larry Blumenthal, director of social-media strategy at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on his blog, Open Road Advisors.

Ms. Krause says the goal is have conversations about the health disparity issue using both online and offline social networking options.

Rather than creating a new online forum, the Connecticut Health Foundation is going to tap into existing options like Facebook and Twitter. Ms. Krause says that the partnership wanted to go where people already were...

Allison Fine, a social-media expert and Chronicle contributor, questions whether Pepsi's contest, Pepsi Refresh Project, is in the interest of producing corporate revenue or philanthropic outcomes.

Pepsi announced its Pepsi Refresh Program earlier this year, which will award more than $20-million in grants to people who come up with the best ideas on how to improve their neighborhoods, towns, or cities.

The company recently completed its first round of grants, awarding 32 winners with $1.3-million total.

On her A. Fine Blog, Ms. Fine asks whether Pepsi is interested in the kinds of returns that an expensive ad campaign would create, or on philanthropic outcomes, such as improved reading skills and environmentally friendly classrooms.

"One thing I do know is that if it is philanthropic outcomes, then this model needs to be extended beyond the contest to a platform for reporting and...

Mike Burns, a nonprofit consultant, believes the Salvation Army's decision to invest heavily in real estate makes good fiscal sense.

The organization owns about $4-billion in real estate nationwide -- comprising one-third of its total assets. Its non-commercial properties provide housing to Salvation Army officers, who are paid modest annual salaries of around $12,000.

"Nonprofits need donations but they also need creativity," writes Mr. Burns, on his Nonprofit Board Crisis blog. "They must be competitive and get the most out of these donations. And, like the Salvation Army, they must constantly emphasize their outcomes -- that's what it's all about."

Mr. Burns says that donors want to believe that the quarter, dollar, or $5 they drop in the kettle makes it possible for the Salvation Army to do the work it does, but in reality the challenges the organization is responding to are far more...