Kiva.org has been enormously successful matching entrepreneurs in developing countries with people who want to loan them money. Visitors to the Web site have made loans totaling more than $75-million in less than four years.

Now the San Francisco charity is testing the idea of including U.S. entrepreneurs.

“Most people think of microfinance as something that helps people in the developing world alone, but the impact of microfinance can be felt in any community that supports creative, industrious entrepreneurs,” Premal Shah, Kiva’s president, said in a written statement.

Starting today, Kiva is featuring clients from Accion USA, a national organization that provides business loans to people who would not qualify for traditional bank loans, and Opportunity Fund, a community development financial institution that makes small-business loans in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Among...

DonorBridge, a new online giving site in North Texas, got off to a big start, raising more than $4-million for 353 area charities in celebration of Dallas Giving Day.

While the site provides general financial data from nonprofit groups across the country, local organizations created detailed profiles that provide information about their programs, finances, and outcomes. DonorBridge was created by the Communities Foundation of Texas together with the Center for Nonprofit Management and the Dallas Foundation.

The two foundations provided $200,000 to match gifts from the public on May 20 and $100,000 to encourage gifts from donor-advised fund holders on May 19, the site’s “preview day.”

Online grant recommendations from donor-advised funds were matched at 50 cents on the dollar, up to $2,500 per fund. Credit-card donations made through the site on May 20 were matched dollar for...

Employees responsible for a charity’s online activities are likely to be spread throughout an organization, rather than concentrated in a single department, according to a new report.

An online survey of 60 nonprofit groups found that only 20 percent had organized all of their employees who work on online programs into a single department whose leader is responsible for those programs. The study was conducted by Convio, an Austin, Tex., company that provides Web-based software to charities.

The other organizations were split almost evenly between a decentralized model — 39 percent of groups — where employees working on online efforts were spread across several different departments and a hybrid model — 40 percent — where a majority of employees were located in a single department, but some staff members were in other departments.

“Given the rate of change in this constantly...

GlobalGiving — an online giving site best known for connecting donors with development projects overseas — is holding a competition to attract more American charities.

“We’ve been open to projects from anywhere in the world, including in the U.S., but a lot of nonprofits have come to us and said, ‘Oh, we didn’t know you allowed us to post projects that are based in the U.S.,’” says Mari Kuraishi, co-founder of GlobalGiving. “So we realized that we needed to make sure that people knew that we were open for business in the U.S. as well.”

The American Open allows any nonprofit group with 501©3 status to post one of its projects on the site. Groups that are able to raise at least $4,000 from 50 or more donors June 8-30 will earn a permanent place on the fund-raising site.

In addition, the three projects that raise the most money during that period will win $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000,...

Planned changes on Facebook will make it easier for nonprofit organizations to use the social-networking site to communicate with their supporters and raise awareness for their causes.

The new “public profiles” –- which will also be available to media organizations, politicians, celebrities, and others –- will function more like an individual’s profile. Charities will be able to share breaking news and information, which will stream directly into their supporters’ newsfeeds, as well as links to photos or videos that the organizations post.

Currently, supporters have to visit organizations’ pages to stay abreast of the information on those sites.

The new public profiles will also include a “wall” where supporters can leave messages and comment on the information that is posted.

Examples of the new public profiles are available on the site for the American Red Cross, Service...

Using a Web 2.0 brand of humor –- along with e-mail, video, and outreach to social networks — the Nonprofit Technology Network raised more than $10,000 for scholarships to its annual technology conference in San Francisco.

“You guys answer each other’s questions, give each other encouragement, point each other in the right direction all the time,” Holly Ross, NTEN’s executive director, says in a video appeal. “Basically through NTEN, you support each other, and these days we all need a lot of support.”

Ms. Ross, who has been with the technology organization for more than six years, gave donors an added incentive to give.

In the video, she laid out three potentially embarrassing activities –- recreating the dance sequence from a Beyoncé video, eating a sandwich called the Bacon Explosion, or playing her college marching band trombone in San Francisco’s Union Square –- and said...

A new interactive map tracks grants that foundations have made to help charities deal with fallout from the economic crisis.

So far, the map –- created by the Foundation Center, in New York –- provides information on 256 grants and program-related investments totaling more than $79-million.

The map displays the data by state, county, city, ZIP code, or Congressional district. Users can also search for information by type of recipient organization, such as arts and culture, employment, or housing.

Among the grants detailed on the map: a $2-million grant by the Ford Foundation to the Detroit Economic Growth foundation to prevent foreclosures and provide emergency assistance to poor people in the city.

The map appears on a new section of the Foundation Center Web site that provides information about grant makers’ response to the financial downturn. The page highlights interviews...

Network for Good, a Bethesda, Md., organization that helps charities raise money on the Internet and runs an online giving site, has acquired the ePhilanthropy Foundation, an organization that promotes ethics in online fund raising.

In addition to providing online fund-raising services, Network for Good also helps charities learn about Internet fund raising through e-mail newsletters, free teleconferences, and its online education center.

The organization says that it plans to integrate information and research from the ePhilanthropy Foundation into its training materials by the end of the summer.

A new mutual fund gives investors the opportunity to become donors — at the same time.

The Davlin Philanthropic Fund lets investors donate to charity a significant portion of the fees typically paid for managing the fund, while retaining ownership of the principal and any financial returns the investment earns.

Investors can currently select up to three charitable beneficiaries from a list of roughly 300 nonprofit organizations, including Easter Seals, the Salvation Army, and the World Wildlife Fund. The mutual fund says that it is also open to adding other qualified charities to the list, at the suggestion of its investors.

At the start, 0.50 percent of assets will be donated, out of fees totaling roughly 1.65 percent. The mutual fund’s founders hope that as the total amount of money under management grows, they will be able to increase the percentage that is contributed....

Mal Warwick Associates, a fund-raising consulting company in Berkeley, Calif., has announced that it intends to acquire Donordigital, a consulting company in San Francisco that specializes in online fund raising.

Last spring Donordigital announced that it was merging with Fenton Communications, a consulting company in New York, a move that was later rescinded, according to a letter Nick Allen, Donordigital’s founder, sent to clients.

“That proved not to be a good fit,” wrote Mr. Allen. “Merging with a direct-response fund-raising firm makes more sense.”

The new alliance is a homecoming of sorts as Donordigital originally started out as a unit of Mal Warwick Associates.

Dan Doyle, who is currently chief executive at Mal Warwick Associates, will also assume that position at Donordigital. Mr. Allen will serve as chief strategy officer.