An alliance of nonprofit groups in Pennsylvania has worked with the state’s General Assembly to set up the Pennsylvania Charitable Nonprofit Caucus, a grouping of state legislators that will discuss charity-related issues.

The Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations, or PANO, and the United Way of Pennsylvania led the effort to create the caucus, which includes Democratic and Republican members of both the house and senate.

“State government and charities share the common goal of promoting quality of life in our communities,” Joe Geiger, PANO’s executive director, said in a statement. “The caucus will help both nonprofits and lawmakers by preventing the unintended consequences of otherwise good legislation.”

David Ross, PANO’s public-policy officer, said charities would like to discuss legislation in areas like charitable tax exemptions, sales taxes on services,...

Sen. Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, plans to introduce legislation on Friday to increase the value of the educational awards earned by participants in AmeriCorps, the federal national-service program, and make them tax-exempt.

The senator, a former Peace Corps volunteer, plans to introduce the AmeriCorps:Together Improving Our Nation (ACTION) Act of 2008, according to a statement from his office.

People who complete a year of full-time service in AmeriCorps, often at nonprofit groups, now receive $4,725 in money they can use to take college courses. The new legislation would raise that amount “to reflect the rising cost of college,” the statement said.

Senator Dodd has scheduled a news conference on Friday to provide further details of the legislation, which would also make the chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service—the federal agency...

NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion-rights group, is feeling a backlash after endorsing Barack Obama for president on Wednesday.

Allison Fine, author of A. Fine Blog, writes that “e-mails started to fly around yesterday” from supporters of Hillary Clinton, who is challenging Mr. Obama for the Democratic nomination.

“In pained tones the senders, my circle of Hillary supporters, expressed their shock that one of the preeminent pro-choice organizations, one that they have supported in good times and bad, had double-crossed them in the eleventh hour of the presidential campaign.”

Ms. Fine, an author and senior fellow at Demos: A Network for Change and Action, a public-policy research organization in New York, criticizes NARAL for “spitting in the eye of the strongest woman candidate in the history of the country,” rather than waiting for three weeks, when the Democratic primaries ...

Cindy Hensley McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential contender, has joined the board of Grateful Nation Montana, a new charity that provides scholarships and other services to children of Montana soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“There are not many more noble causes than the young soldiers who have given their lives for the cause of freedom. And, especially for me as a military mother, it is certainly significant to support this newly founded organization as a board member,” Ms. McCain said in an e-mail message.

Grateful Nation Montana, in Conrad, Mont., was started by David Bell, an insurance executive, and John McCarrick, a lawyer. Mr. Bell said the group — which is working with the Montana state university system to provide tutors and mentors to the children who get scholarships — is a pilot project that the organization hopes can be spread across...

Despite Sen. Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the presidency, women are greatly underrepresented in the U.S. political system – -a scenario the White House Project is attempting to change.

Marie Wilson, the group’s president, told a session at a Council on Foundations conference about her group’s efforts to train women across the country to run for political office, calling it an example of nonpartisan political activity that is permitted under the tax code governing charities.

The United States ranks 71st in the world in the percentage of women serving in parliament (here, the House of Representatives). “It is not really a representative democracy,” said Ms. Wilson.

Ms. Wilson, who headed the Ms. Foundation for almost two decades before starting the White House Project in 1998, said many of the women who received grants from the foundation were creating innovative social...

Sen. Barack Obama, under fire for telling a gathering in Marin County, Calif., that people in small towns are “bitter” about federal neglect of their communities, got in trouble because people hate to be on the receiving end of stereotypes, says Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies.

“Who wants to be labeled?” he writes on the center’s online news journal, the Daily Yonder. “Even in the context of sharing polling data that correlates professed values with recurring disappointments, who wants to be summed up and explained away for the benefit of Marin County donors?”

But, he adds, the country’s challenge is to get beyond the controversy over the “bitter” comment and follow up on the Democratic presidential candidate’s point that “rural life is threatened by economic policy that perpetually fails rural communities.”

“There are 60 million of us in rural America,” Mr...

More than 30 members of the House of Representatives have signed a bipartisan letter asking the House Appropriations Committee to reject the 2009 budget cuts proposed by President Bush for national-service programs.

The proposals would prevent the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that operates the programs, from fulfilling its strategic plan of boosting the number of Americans who volunteer annually by 10 million, to 75 million, by 2010, the letter says.

“Americans have stepped forward in record numbers to serve, but funding cuts have prevented national service programs from growing at a rate to meet demand,” it adds.

President Bush, as part of an effort to rein in the federal deficit, in February proposed cutting the Corporation for National and Community Service’s program budget from $782.7-million in 2008 to $751.5-million in 2009. That...

A group that aims to get nonprofit organizations more involved in nonpartisan election activities will unveil the 2008 National Nonprofit Vote Campaign on April 1.

The campaign, created by the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network, will provide training, information, legal resources, how-to guides, and materials such as bumper stickers and posters to help nonprofit groups get voters to the polls for the November elections.

“Our belief is that nonprofits are the sleeping giant of the democratic process,” said Bridgette Rongitsch, director of the network, a project of the Minnesota Council on Nonprofits. “These groups have daily contact and super trusting relationships with the people they work for. These are the same communities who are not turning out [to vote] in big numbers.”

The Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network—which was created in 2005 and has received money from foundations ...

The U.S. House of Representatives last night rejected by one vote a bill to reauthorize and expand the national-service programs operated by the Corporation for National and Community Service, disappointing advocates who were hoping Congress would breathe new life into programs like AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America.

The Generations Invigorating Volunteering and Education (GIVE) Act, H.R. 5563, would have authorized AmeriCorps — which provides volunteers and grants to charities, religious organizations, and government agencies — to expand from 75,000 participants to 100,000 over five years.

It also would have created several new programs, including a summer service program for middle- and high-school students, a Silver Scholarship Program to provide $1,000 educational grants to people age 55 a...

As the 2008 election nears, antipoverty advocates should work together on a bipartisan basis to ensure the next president gives priority to narrowing the gap between rich and poor, speakers at a conference said today.

“We need to ask the next president whether poverty and opportunity are issues of importance to him or her, and if so, what he or she will do about it,” said Andrea Silbert, president of the Eos Foundation, in Boston, one of several grant makers that created a project called Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity: Foundations Ask Presidential Candidates What They’ll Do for America.

Ms. Silbert called on foundations to play a leading role in getting the issue on the president’s radar screen. Despite increased spending by grant makers on antipoverty projects, she said, the country’s poverty rate has not significantly decreased over the last 30 years. “More and more...