The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved legislation that will extend for another year a variety of charitable tax incentives.

The measures, part of the Tax Extenders Act of 2009, H.R. 4213, would allow people age 70½ and older to continue making charitable donations of up to $100,000 a year from their individual retirement accounts without having to pay taxes on the distribution.

They would also extend tax provisions to encourage donations of property, food inventory, books to public schools, and computer equipment for educational purposes.

A summary of the legislation, which was approved by a vote of 242 to 181, is available on the House Ways and Means Committee Web site.

Congressional negotiators have agreed to allocate $50-million in the 2010 fiscal year for the new Social Innovation Fund, which will provide grants to help promising nonprofit groups expand effective programs — the full amount requested by President Obama.

However, in a deal yesterday on the Corporation for National and Community Service budget, a House-Senate conference committee decided to trim spending on two other programs designed to help nonprofit groups — the Volunteer Generation Fund and the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program.

Supporters of the Social Innovation Fund were worried Congress would cut its budget as the House had earlier voted to spend only $35-million on the program. But the conference committee agreed to follow the Senate’s lead by keeping it at $50-million.

The committee also agreed to match President Obama’s total budget request of almost $1.15-billion...

Alan Khazei, the veteran national-service advocate, lost his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts on Tuesday but said he would continue mobilizing for social change by returning to his former role as nonprofit leader.

Mr. Khazei, who came in third in a Democratic primary for the seat vacated by the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, said in a concession speech that he planned to return to Be the Change, the nonprofit group in Boston he founded in 2007, and ramp up an antipoverty campaign called OpportunityNation.

Saying he had met many people suffering from economic hardship during the campaign, he urged supporters to join him in a movement to “restore equity and fairness to the middle class and low-income people.”

Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, won the primary, and U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano came in second. With little name recognition and an abbreviated ...

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report that reviews the size and scope of the charitable world and outlines some of the policy questions that affect it.

“An Overview of the Nonprofit and Charitable Sector” covers issues like number of employees, revenues and assets, justification for government subsidies, federal programs in areas like national service and social innovation, and tax treatment of donations and assets.

It also discusses arguments that government grants crowd out private giving, proposals for a nonprofit oversight agency, and ways to help nonprofit groups during economic downturns. The report offers no specific policy recommendations but reviews a range of ideas, studies, and reports.

A Senate committee will vote on Thursday whether to approve the nomination of Patrick Corvington, a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, as chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

President Obama nominated Mr. Corvington, an expert in nonprofit leadership, to the post in October. He would succeed David Eisner, who left the agency almost a year ago and is now chief executive of the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will consider Mr. Corvington along with several other administration nominees. If the committee gives the green light, the nomination will go to the full Senate.

Note: The committee was originally scheduled to consider Mr. Corvington’s nomination on Wednesday but has rescheduled the vote.

Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, has introduced legislation that would extend a variety of charitable tax incentives for another year.

The bill, H.R. 4213, would allow people age 70½ and older to continue making charitable donations of up to $100,000 a year from their individual retirement accounts without having to pay taxes on the distribution.

It would also extend tax measures to encourage donations of property, food inventory, books to public schools, and computer equipment for educational purposes.

The charitable provisions — part of a broader bill to extend more than 40 tax breaks that are scheduled to expire at the end of 2009 — would cost more than $1-billion over 10 years, according to a summary. The IRA measure would account for more than half of that amount ($591-million).

The House is expected to vote on the...

Seven liberal, civil-rights, and advocacy organizations condemned Congress today for what they described as a rush to judgment after an independent investigation found no evidence that Acorn, the controversial community-organizing group, had engaged in illegal activity.

Congress voted to cut off federal funds to Acorn — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — in September after undercover videos appeared to show employees in several cities offering advice to two conservative activists about illegal activities, including prostitution and child trafficking.

The investigation — led by Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general — found that the activities caught on the videos demonstrated “longstanding management weaknesses” but did not lead to any actions by Acorn employees, “illegal or otherwise.” It added that the videos were all of members or part...

Alan Khazei, the veteran national-service advocate who is running a long-shot campaign for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, won a major coup on Sunday — endorsement by The Boston Globe for the Democratic nomination.

The Globe praised Mr. Khazei’s efforts to build grass-roots networks to push for change, saying “this entrepreneurial model of progressive politics offers hope for real improvements.”

Mr. Khazei faces three opponents in the Democratic primary on December 8, with Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, leading in the polls. Mr. Khazei, the co-founder of City Year, the youth national-service corps, has been trailing his competitors, but the newspaper’s endorsement could give his campaign a boost.

“At the moment, [Mr. Khazei] is more of an impassioned amateur than a seasoned pro,” the Globe writes. “But his energy, idealism, and...

Charity and foundation leaders Thursday urged Congress to take action to help the nonprofit organizations that are on the front lines of the mounting demand for food aid as the economic recession cuts a wide swath.

“The number of new users coupled with the growing need of existing clients has made it increasingly difficult for food banks to adequately serve the needs of those who need it most,” Scott Wolf, a founding member of the Feeding America Entertainment Council, told two House Ways and Means subcommittees that held a hearing on the issue.

The witnesses — who also included representatives of Catholic Charities USA; Northwest Harvest, in Seattle; United Way Worldwide; and the J. Bulow Campbell Foundation, in Atlanta — said the demand was rising at a time when donations were static or falling. They offered a variety of proposals for easing the strain in their written testimony, ...

Congress should provide close to $1.5-billion in extra spending on national-service programs over the next two years to provide jobs for young people who have been hit hard by the economic crisis, a new report by the Center for American Progress argues.

The effort could help both young people who are experiencing the country’s highest unemployment rates in years and nonprofit groups that could use youth workers to help meet the rising demand for antipoverty services, it says.

The center, a liberal think tank in Washington, proposes increasing the federal funds for AmeriCorps, Vista, Youth Corps, and Youth Build in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 in a way that would create the equivalent of more than 100,000 new jobs.

It suggests, for example, speeding up plans to expand AmeriCorps, which is now slated to more than triple its size, to 250,000 positions, by 2017 under the Edward M....