President Bush’s veto this week of a children’s health-insurance bill has inspired one charity, Families USA, to try a new advocacy-campaign tactic—advertising on blogs.

Families USA, a group in Washington that promotes low-cost health care, has taken out ads on 14 primarily left-leaning political blogs such as Crooks and Liars and Talking Points Memo in an effort to convince Congress to override the veto of a bill to extend and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.

The ads link to a video that the group created, Kids vs Bush, and urge people to sign a petition and contact their Congressional representatives.

Families USA decided to try “blogads” for the first time because it wanted to reach people who were not on its traditional advocacy lists, said Geraldine Henrich-Koenis, deputy director of communications. “This is an issue a lot of people are behind,”...

Rep. Nick Lampson, Democrat of Texas, has taken a new tack in the campaign to persuade Congress to allow people to continue donating money from their individual retirement accounts to charities tax-free.

Mr. Lampson last month introduced the Charitable Tax Relief Act of 2007, H.R. 3596, which does just one thing: makes permanent the legislation that allows such donations when people are 70-1/2 or older, which is set to expire at the end of this year.

Unlike the other bill that has been introduced to extend the legislation, the Public Good IRA Rollover Act of 2007, it does not expand the benefit in any way.

“I’ve found that if you keep these things as simple as they can possibly be, things go through a little more quickly,” Mr. Lampson said.

The more-complicated bill would allow donors to give to additional...

Few groups are watching more closely to see if President Bush fulfills his promise to veto the children’s health-insurance bill that Congress adopted this week than Catholic Charities USA.

As part of its new Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America, the charity has made the legislation to extend and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, one of its top priorities.

The group’s supporters flooded members of Congress with 2,000 messages this week urging them to vote for the legislation, and sent an equal number to President Bush asking him not to veto it, said Candy Hill, the charity’s senior vice president for social policy.

Rev. Clarence Williams, the group’s director of racial equality, participated in a pro-SCHIP news conference on Wednesday with three other religious leaders and Congressional supporters including Democrats Harry Reid, of Nevada, the...

A Congressional caucus that was formed to discuss issues that affect the charitable world now has 25 members and will start meeting this fall, probably next month, says an aide to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a caucus co-chair.

Among the first issues that the new caucus will discuss are a tax bill that Congress is expected to adopt this fall and the proposed extension of legislation allowing some people to donate money from their individual retirement accounts to charity tax-free, says Nikia Okoye, senior legislative assistant to Ms. Tubbs Jones, Democrat of Ohio.

The other co-chair of the Congressional Philanthropy Caucus is Robin Hayes, Republican of North Carolina. The two lawmakers created the group as a way to raise awareness in Congress about philanthropy and to discuss legislative goals that affect charities and foundations.

In a press release announcing the caucus in June,...

Sen. Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, plans to investigate whether donors should receive tax deductions for contributing to university athletics departments, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

An aide to Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, told the newspaper that the senator wants to ask the Internal Revenue Service whether it is comfortable that booster clubs and sports programs “have met the requirement of being a charity.”

The concerns come in response to a Chronicle article detailing how contributions to university sports programs are growing at the expense of donations to academic programs on some campuses.

In a written statement, Mr. Grassley expressed concern about reports that top donors are being rewarded with perquisites like free seats on team planes. “I wonder what the public gets out of that,” he said.

Dean Zerbe, senior counsel to Senator Charles E. Grassley — the Iowa Republican who chaired the Senate Finance Committee until the Democrats took over Congress this year — is known for his blunt opinions on where the charitable world is going wrong. He did not disappoint at the Council of Foundations annual conference of community foundations in San Francisco.

While emphasizing that he spoke for himself, and not Senator Grassley, Mr. Zerbe pronounced his thoughts on a range of nonprofit issues, including:

Good governance. “Too often it’s too easy to say, ‘Well, the lawyers have blessed it. My lawyer said that’s okay.’ Well lawyers, they’ll bless just about anything coming down the pike. . . . Stop thinking about what the lawyer says is okay; this is the beginning of trouble. Start thinking: How will this really look? How do I feel about this? How am I going to explain this to the ...