As home lending dries up, Habitat for Humanity affiliates in the Washington, D.C., area are seeing a spike in interest in Habitat homes and are looking for innovative solutions to the foreclosure crisis, reports The Washington Post.

Charlene McCall, executive director for Habitat in suburban Prince George’s County, Md., said attendance has doubled at the volunteer home-building organization’s information meetings on obtaining housing. Dennis Smyth, interim chief of the Washington branch, said rising donations from individuals are helping make up for a drop in corporate giving.

In Montgomery County, Md., Habitat is collaborating with local governments to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed homes — the first such effort by a U.S. Habitat branch, according to John Paukstis, the Montgomery chapter’s executive director.

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Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis University issued a public apology to people at his institution on Thursday, saying he “screwed up” the disclosure of plans to shut down the school’s Rose Art Museum, reports The Boston Globe.

Mr. Reinharz said the Rose will stay open but “be more fully integrated into the university’s central mission.” He elaborated in an interview with the newspaper, saying the Rose would be “a gallery and teaching site” but that “we don’t want to be in the public museum business.” Only a “minute number” of the museum’s nearly 7,200 works would be sold, he said.

Plus: See an opinion article from the new issue of The Chronicle examining what the Brandeis case and others like it mean to the ties between charities and donors.

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A Los Angeles Times editorial calls on President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to bar religious charities that receive federal money from hiring people only of their own faith.

The Bush administration’s Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives did not ban such practices. Mr. Obama had pledged to reverse that decision, the Times wrote, but his amended executive order creating a revamped Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships lacks “a clear statement that faith-based services that accept federal money may not discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion.” Instead it establishes an advisory council to refer legal questions over recipients’ practices to the attorney general.

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Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal preacher and Obama campaign adviser, has been named to head the new administration’s office of faith-based initiatives, The New York Times reports, citing unnamed religious leaders.

The revamped and renamed Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is expected to have a broader mandate under President Obama, overseeing distribution of grants to religious and community groups but also looking for other ways to involve such agencies in solving social problems.

Mr. DuBois, who holds a master’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University, left law school to go to work for then-Senator Obama. During the presidential transition he consulted with religious and charity groups on the contentious question of rescinding a Bush administration ruling that allows religious groups that receive federal funds to hire only...

New Jersey state agencies have filed suit to dissolve a foundation to aid ill World Trade Center rescue workers, alleging the organization’s founders spent $75,000 in donations on personal expenses, reports The Star-Ledger, of Newark.

According to the state’s attorney general and consumer-affairs office, Frederick Parisi and his mother, Jean Street, paid for mortgages, meals, medical appointments, and private-school tuition with money solicited for their 9/11 Rescue Workers Foundation, of Kinnelon. Mr. Parisi, who is currently facing unrelated fraud and theft charges, denied any wrongdoing in connection with the charity.

Buffeted by the recession and the Bernard Madoff scandal, the American Civil Liberties Union has laid off 10 percent of its staff members nationwide and introduced other cost-cutting measures, The Washington Post reports.

ACLU’s executive director, Anthony D. Romero, cited reduced donations and grants, including money from two foundations that were “wiped out” by their Madoff investments.

NARAL Pro-Choice America also confirmed staff cuts to the Post’s political blog 44. Ted Miller, the abortion-rights group’s communications director, declined to specify the level of layoffs.

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A group of 10 Harvard alumni wants the university’s endowment, which has lost more than $8-billion since the end of the last fiscal year, to seek the return of $21-million in bonuses paid to money managers, The Boston Globe reports.

The 1969 graduates sent a letter of protest to Harvard President Drew Faust over the payments, which were disclosed last month. From June 30 to October 31 Harvard’s endowment shrunk from $36.8-billion to $28.7-billion, and Faust has warned of an overall 30-percent drop by the end of this fiscal year.

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Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz remains committed to closing the school’s Rose Art Museum but has broached the possibility of keeping its $350-million collection, reports The Boston Globe.

Meeting Wednesday with about 200 students, Mr. Reinharz said Brandeis might not need to sell the modern-art trove if its economic and philanthropic situation improves. “We have no particular mandate from the board of trustees as to when to sell, how to sell,” he told the Globe in an interview.

University administrators disclosed at the meeting that Brandeis’s endowment has declined more than 20 percent, from $712-million to $549-million.

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A new charitable network is slated to announce today the creation of a “crisis loan fund” to help nonprofit groups affected by Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme, The Wall Street Journal reports on its blog The Wallet.

The Jewish Network Fund will start with $5-million to be distributed to smaller charities that invested with Madoff or lost grants from organizations that did so. “I don’t think that we have any illusions that we’re correcting the problem that was inflicted on the not-for-profit community as a result of this scandal,” the fund’s president, Mark Charendoff, said. “We’re trying in our own way to make a contribution.”