The Muscular Dystrophy Association announced plans Wednesday to shorten its annual Labor Day fund-raising telethon from 21.5 hours to six hours starting next year, the Chicago Tribune writes.

The broadcast, hosted by and closely associated with the comedian Jerry Lewis since 1966, will run from 6 p.m. to midnight next year, an extended prime-time slot intended to attract more-prominent guest stars and increase viewership and income. This year’s telethon took in $58.9-million, down from $60.4-million in 2009.

The charity’s 750-word press release on the move mentions Mr. Lewis only once, raising questions as to the 84-year-old comedian’s future involvement, according to Phil Rosenthal, a media writer for the newspaper.

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Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has recommended approval of a deal to turn the nonprofit Caritas Christi Health Care system into a chain of for-profit hospitals, says The Boston Globe.

The report issued yesterday by Ms. Coakley’s office imposes several conditions intended to assure that the buyer, Cerberus Capital Management, keeps the six Boston-area Catholic hospitals open for at least five years, fully finances pensions for their workers and retirees, and pays for continued state oversight of the institutions.

Cerberus must still secure approval from the state’s highest court, which has final say on the transfer or charitable assets into private hands, and must obtain new hospital licenses from state regulators.

Caritas officials have said the cash infusion from the sale is necessary to maintain and improve the hospitals, but critics of the proposed deal have raised ...

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is supplying a $1.5-million grant to ABC News to expand coverage of global health issues, according to The New York Times.

The grant amounts to a quarter of the budget for the yearlong project, with the rest coming from the network. David Westin, president of ABC News, said the Gates money would pay for “overseas travel and production” for segments on issues such as infant and maternal health but that the network would retain editorial control.

Mr. Westin said ABC News had previously worked with foundations to cover stories but had never accepted a cash grant. In exchange for the money, the network committed to extensive coverage of health issues on all its news programs as well as two prime-time specials.

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A planned performing arts center at the World Trade Center site will get a $100-million infusion of federal funds, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal report.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will vote at its next meeting in November to allocate the money from a federal fund established after the 2001 terrorist attacks to rebuild the damaged neighborhood, under an agreement reached by government officials.

The money “sends a message that the [center] is real, and it’s moving forward,” said state Sen. Daniel Squadron, who worked with city and state officials over the summer to keep the project on track.

In other arts news, a group that promotes cultural giving says British arts organizations cannot make up for government cuts solely through philanthropy, writes the Financial Times.

In its newly released study, Arts & Business says cultural institutions can raise nearly $1...

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which produced the iconic “this is your brain on drugs” commercials of the 1980s and '90s, has renamed itself as the Partnership at Drugfree.org, the Associated Press writes.

Steve Pasierb, the group's president, said the new name would help the New York group dispel misperceptions that it is a government agency or primarily involved in lobbying on drug policy. The organization focuses on drug prevention and treatment and helping parents figure out how to stop children from using narcotics and alcohol.

In announcing the change Thursday, the group also introduced its first long-term celebrity spokeswoman, the former Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert, who is a recovering alcoholic.

The billionaire financier Vinod Khosla says he will pump the approximately $117-million he made in the recent public offering of the Indian lender SKS Microfinance into other for-profit ventures that seek to fight poverty in the developing world, says The New York Times.

The India-born, Silicon Valley-based Mr. Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, plans to start a venture-capital fund to finance businesses providing health, energy, and education to the poor in India, Africa, and elsewhere.

“There needs to be more experiments in building sustainable businesses going after the market for the poor,” he said.

In Seattle, a group of local investors and institutions have contributed $20-million to a fund that capitalizes small lenders in Latin America, reports The Seattle Times.

Seattle University and the Seattle Foundation are among the backers of the Social Investment Fund 2010,...

Two campaign-finance watchdog groups have asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate a nonprofit advocacy group affiliated with the Republican political adviser Karl Rove, writes The New York Times.

In a letter released Tuesday, leaders of the watchdog groups—Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21—say that Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, or Crossroads GPS, “was organized to participate and intervene in the 2010 Congressional races,” in violation of its status as an advocacy group under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

A Democratic senator last week sought an IRS review of advocacy groups, which have become increasingly active during this year’s campaign, primarily on behalf of Republicans. Such organizations are not required to disclose their donors as long as their “primary purpose” is not political.

Steven Law, chief executive officer of Crossroads GPS...

Bankers who serve some of country’s wealthiest people say the continuing downturn is deterring rich Americans from boosting their giving, Reuters writes.

Attending the Reuters Global Banking Summit in New York, top executives of Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse, and other major financial institutions said wealthy clients are reassessing their philanthropy amid uncertainty over the recovery and whether Congress will extend George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the richest households.

“We haven’t seen too much aggressive behavior there about [donations] getting bigger,” said Anthony DeChellis, chief executive of Credit Suisse Private Bank (Americas). Keith Banks, head of Bank of America’s U.S. Trust, said clients who are maintaining giving levels “are being more selective" and giving their money to a smaller number of groups.

Governments from around the world on Tuesday promised $11.7-billion over the next three years to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, up more than 20 percent over their 2008-10 commitment but well below the amount deemed necessary to meet United Nations goals to beat the diseases, writes the Associated Press.

The Global Fund, the nonprofit organization that handles money to fight the diseases, said it would take $17-billion to approach the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals regarding the three pandemics and $20-billion to ensure achieving them.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the fund, called the money pledged “disappointing” and said lack of funds would slow expansion of programs now in place and cost lives.

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The New York Public Library is to name Anthony W. Marx, president of Amherst College in Massachusetts, as its new leader Wednesday, according to The New York Times.

Pending expected approval by the library’s board, Mr. Marx, a political scientist and a New York native, will replace Paul LeClerc, who is retiring next year.

Fund raising is a big part of the job for the institution's leader. Last year, the organization raised more than $75-million from private sources.

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