In an effort to help Pakistani refugees, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is using a relatively new fund-raising tool: text messages.

The secretary announced yesterday that by typing the word “swat” into cell phones and dialing 20222, Americans can make a $5 gift to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The U.N. group is providing tents, clothing, food, and medicine to the almost 1.5 million people who have been displaced in the Swat Valley region of Pakistan, where the government is fighting the Taliban.

Ms. Clinton did not say how much she expected to garner with the campaign, but did say, “I’m hoping that we’ll have a big response to the text messaging. Just think if a million people in the United States gave at least $5, that’s $5-million. And that would be a significant contribution from ordinary citizens, just people who care about what’s happening.”

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With state and local governments strapped for cash, they are increasingly looking for new sources of revenue — including imposing fees on nonprofit groups.

According to Governing magazine, states and localities are receiving money from the economic-stimulus package, but it’s not enough to cover budget gaps. To find revenue, some municipalities have placed fees on tax-exempt groups to pay for city or county services.

Nonprofit organizations “don’t have to pay property or sales taxes, but they are liable for fees,” the magazine says. “One Minnesota city is charging a curb fee based on property frontage as a way of generating revenue for street upkeep — and as a way to get 501c3s to chip in for the local services they receive.”

Even before the recent downturn took hold, governments considered such fees to make up for losses in property taxes.

According to a 2006 study by The...

President Obama has nominated María Otero, chief executive of Accion International, a microfinance group, to be the under secretary of global affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

The appointment requires Senate approval, which is expected in a few weeks, and comes as the State Department says it is seeking greater partnerships with international nonprofit groups.

According to Accion’s Web site, the group’s chief deputy, Catherine Quense, will serve as the interim head as a search committee looks for Ms. Otero’s successor.

Ms. Otero joined Accion in 1986 to lead its lending program in Honduras. Three years later she helped open the group’s Washington office, and in 2000 she was appointed chief executive.

As under secretary, Ms. Otero would be part of an office that oversees a variety of international issue.

According to the State Department’s Web site: “The Office of...

Rajiv J. Shah, director of agricultural development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been nominated to lead the Obama administration’s agriculture research and education efforts.

If approved by the Senate, Mr. Shah would serve as an under secretary for research, education, and economics, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This would not be the first time Mr. Shah has been involved in government. Before joining the foundation, Mr. Shah was a health-care adviser to former Vice President Al Gore during his 2000 bid for the presidency and was a transition aide on health for Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania.

According to his biography on the foundation’s Web site and a press release from the White house, Mr. Shah joined the Gates foundation in 2001 and was director of strategic opportunities and deputy director of policy and finance for global health. In these roles,...

Peter Groff, a state legislator from Colorado, has been appointed to be director for the U.S. Education Department’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Center, which helps small religious groups and others receive education grants.

The Bush administration set up faith-based centers in several federal agencies, and President Obama has promised to continue such efforts.

Mr. Groff, a Democrat, has served in the Colorado Senate since 2003. He also co-hosts a weekly radio talk show about politics and government policy on satellite radio.

According to The Denver Post, Mr. Groff “has long been a champion of education reform, sometimes to the chagrin of teachers’ unions.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development has again postponed an important step in the start of a controversial security program that would screen charities and their employees for possible ties to terrorists.

In the April 2 Federal Register, the agency said it would delay until May 4 a rule that would exempt the program, known as the Partner Vetting System, from some privacy laws.

The final rule was issued in January and was scheduled to go into effect a month later. In February it was postponed and now has been postponed again.

Un­der the system, nonprofit groups that apply for agency grants and contracts must provide the names of “key individuals” overseeing their projects, including board members, executives, and other employees. The federal government would then check the names against a classified intelligence database that contains information on terrorists.

Agency...

More than 260 foundation leaders came to Washington this week to meet with members of Congress — and their timing could not have been better.

Nonprofit issues were a hot topic all week. Lawmakers debated whether to expand national-service programs; President Obama on national television defended his controversial plan to reduce tax breaks for charitable deductions for wealthy people; and several senators introduced legislation that would change the way grant makers pay taxes on their net investment income.

As one foundation official put it, the stars were aligned.

Indeed, for members of Philanthropy Northwest, a regional association of grant makers based in Seattle, the annual “Foundations on the Hill” event was an exhausting, but productive, day.

In previous years, members of Congress had asked mostly about abuses in the nonprofit world, wondering whether foundations were ...

Rep. John Lewis, an influential Democratic lawmaker, is interested in supporting the work of charities and foundations during the economic downturn, an aide to the congressman said today.

Michaeleen Crowell, legislative director for Mr. Lewis, said the congressman from Georgia formed strong opinions of the nonprofit world after working with grass-roots groups as part of the civil-rights movement.

“Because of these experiences in many ways, he’s one of your biggest allies,” she said. “But his experiences also make him a sober judge to hold high expectations for the charitable community.”

Ms. Crowell spoke at a meeting of the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers in Arlington, Va. Members of the council are in Washington this week to meet with federal lawmakers.

Ms. Crowell encouraged nonprofit leaders to tell members of Congress about the social problems in...

While the White House has been quiet about the Office of Social Innovation that it plans to create, Diana Aviv, chief executive of Independent Sector, shed some light on the new government effort.

Ms. Aviv said she expected the Obama administration to officially announce the new office in a few weeks and that Sonal Shah, who used to lead global-development giving at Google.org, will lead it. Ms. Shah was a member of a group that advised the incoming Obama administration on “innovation and civil society” during the transition.

The White House press office declined to comment about personnel appointments to the office.

Ms. Aviv made her remarks to members of the Council on Foundations, who are in town this week to discuss policy issues with members of Congress. The council represents about 2,000 grant makers, and Independent Sector represents about 600 charities and foundations. ...

About a dozen advocacy groups and Muslim charities told a federal court today that the government’s seizure of a charity’s assets because of allegations it assisted terrorists hurts humanitarian work and America’s efforts to fight terrorism.

The groups raised the concern in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development, a Toledo charity. In 2006, the Treasury Department froze the group’s assets because it was under investigation for supporting terrorists in the Middle East.

The charity has denied the charges and along with the American Civil Liberties Union and others, last year sued the government, saying the seizure of the financial assets was illegal.

An executive order signed by President Bush in 2001 allows the federal government to freeze the assets of charities, businesses, and individuals if they are being investigated...