President Obama has nominated Nancy E. Lindborg, president of Mercy Corps, the global relief organization, to a position at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

If approved by the Senate, Ms. Lindborg would be assistant administrator at the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Bureau.

Ms. Lindborg, who joined Mercy Corps in 1996, also serves as co-president of the board of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a network of nonprofit groups, businesses, foreign-policy experts, and others that promote diplomacy and development as foreign-policy tools.

Chances appear dim that President Obama will get anywhere near the full amount of money he requested in next year's budget for Promise Neighborhoods -- the program to help nonprofit groups set up antipoverty projects modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone.

The administration requested $210-million for the effort in 2011. But the Senate Appropriations Committee last week proposed spending only $20-million, while a House Appropriations subcommittee voted earlier to allocate $60-million.

The Congressional budget figures are higher than the $10-million that will be spent on Promise Neighborhoods this year. But the 2010 grants are for planning efforts, while much of the 2011 money would help cities actually put the projects into place over five years. A Senate Appropriations Committee report said the committee would consider the need for more money after reviewing the plans of the winners of...

President Obama announced Thursday he plans to nominate seven people to the Corporation for National and Community Service board -- a move to fill seats that have been vacant for many months, some for more than a year.

The highest-profile name on the president's list is John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a prominent Democrat who was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff and co-chair of Mr. Obama's transition team.

The 15-member bipartisan board oversees the federal agency that operates AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and other volunteer and national-service programs, along with the new $50-million Social Innovation Fund, the federal grants program designed to expand successful nonprofit programs.

President Obama said he also intends to nominate:

* Rick Christman, chief executive of Employment Solutions, a nonprofit group in Lexington, Ky., that helps people...

More than 50 liberal nonprofit advocacy groups have joined forces to fight a proposed exemption to a campaign-finance bill that would benefit large membership organizations like the National Rifle Association.

"It is inappropriate and inequitable to create a two-tiered system of campaign finance laws and First Amendment protections, one for the most powerful and influential and another for everyone else," says a letter sent yesterday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was signed by groups including the Alliance for Justice, the Campaign for Community Change, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a variety of anti-gun-violence groups, and the Sierra Club and several other environmental organizations.

However, some good-government groups -- including Common Cause, Democracy 21, and the League of Women Voters -- support the bill despite the exemption as a way to achieve what they...

Nonprofit leaders and experts gathered on Capitol Hill today to praise newly unveiled legislation that aims to raise the profile of the charitable world in Washington.

"We have a government that counts iceberg-lettuce heads and can tell us how many iceberg-lettuce heads were put on the ground last year," Tim Delaney, president of the National Council of Nonprofits, said at a press conference. "Yet it cannot tell us how many heads of individuals were employed by nonprofits. Why are iceberg-lettuce heads more valuable than the people who take care of America's communities?"

The new bill, the Nonprofit Sector and Community Solutions Act, H.R. 5533, was introduced Tuesday evening by Rep. Betty McCollum, Democrat of Minnesota. It would create two new bodies to make recommendations about federal policy affecting charities and require federal agencies to step up their collection of data...

A legal organization has unveiled a new Web site, LawForChange, that offers information and resources about legal issues affecting nonprofit groups in areas including fund raising, lobbying, governance, and taxation.

The site, created by the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, allows people to search for laws and policies at the federal level and in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

It also features blogs, commentary, a discussion forum, and guides for starting a "social sector organization." The Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation is the nonprofit affiliate of an international network of commercial law firms, Lex Mundi. Its members offer pro bono legal advice to social entrepreneurs.

The way nonprofit groups are reimbursed for work done under federal grants is erratic and needs to be clarified, says a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Much of the money flows through state and local governments, which offer different rates depending on their policies, it says.

That makes it difficult to get a clear picture of whether the contracts are covering the indirect costs (such as rent or utilities) of the charities doing the work, it says. When such costs are not fully paid for, it adds, the groups cut back on their services -- or on vital "back office" functions, which can over time compromise their ability to fulfill their missions.

Financing gaps "potentially limit the sector's ability to effectively partner with the federal government" and could even "risk the viability of the sector," the report says.

The GAO -- which based its report on...

A White House event on Thursday will highlight a coalition of more than 20 grant makers that have pledged nearly $5-million over three years to help broaden the impact of the Social Innovation Fund, the new federal grant program for effective nonprofit groups.

The grant makers, which include big foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Atlantic Philanthropies along with venture-philanthropy groups like New Profit and SeaChange Capital Partners, are paying for an effort called "Scaling What Works."

"The economic crisis reveals that even strong nonprofits with compelling evidence of their results struggle for capital," said a statement by Kathleen P. Enright, president of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, or GEO, the group that is operating the new program. She said the grant makers want to support the Social Innovation Fund's goal of helping "result-driven...

The White House has planned an event for Thursday to announce "philanthropic commitments" that have been made to support the Social Innovation Fund, the new federal grants program to help nonprofit groups expand effective social efforts.

First Lady Michelle Obama and Patrick Corvington, chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, will make the announcement at the First Lady's Garden.

The national-service agency is in the process of selecting 7 to 10 recipients of this year's $50-million in grants that will go to "intermediary" grant makers, which will in turn provide money to innovative nonprofit groups. Both the grant makers and the nonprofit groups must provide equal matching funds.

Thursday's announcement will reveal which grant makers have stepped forward to offer an "initial phase" of matching funds, as well as other "investments in innovative community...

Congressional leaders announced this morning they would unveil new legislation to extend through the end of 2010 various tax incentives for charitable donations, including gifts made by older people from individual retirement accounts.

The bill would also ease rules governing employer contributions to defined-benefit pension plans, a move that would offer relief to charities whose plans have suffered investment losses during the economic downturn.

Those measures will be included in the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, H.R. 4213, a package of wide-ranging proposals in areas including unemployment insurance and health benefits, small-business loan programs, aid to states, tax cuts, Medicare payments, disaster relief, and mine safety.

Both the House and Senate have previously agreed to extend the charitable incentives, but the two sides have been wrangling over how to ...