Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, made the topic a theme of her keynote speech at the annual meeting in Chicago of the nonprofit coalition. Two other chief executives, Melissa Bradley, of the Tides Foundation, and Bob Edgar, of Common Cause, spent an hour and a half at the meeting discussing how it has posed challenges for their organizations.

In her speech, Ms. Aviv said that many important government social programs are being eroded because of fiscal challenges and the failure of politicians to reach agreement. Ms. Aviv urged nonprofits to play a leading role in promoting national discussions about the kind of society Americans want and the role of government in achieving it.

“What better meeting ground than our nonpartisan space?” she asked. “Can we partner with those who promote civility in the public square and work with them to help sort out hyperbole from fact and prioritize what is important?”

Said Ms. Aviv: “From global foundations to neighborhood nonprofits, we can demand an end to political stalemate as strategy.”

Speaking after Ms. Aviv, Eric Tanenblatt, vice chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service, said he didn’t believe that people should be looking to government to solve their problems but agreed with Ms. Aviv about the challenges posed by the political climate.

“We’ve lost the days of healthy dialogue and debate,” he said.

Darren Walker, a vice president at the Ford Foundation, said that conversations about society’s future needed to include a discussion about “justice.”

“One of the fundamental things left out of this conversation is our notion of economic justice,” he said. “We must have a strong and vibrant middle class.”

He added: “We have to get beyond our common resentment to get answers.”

Ronald Richard, president of the Cleveland Foundation, urged nonprofits to identify specific solutions to the polarization and gridlock in Washington. His idea: Eliminate the option of a second term for presidents and replace it with one six-year term, so presidents don’t spend half their first term running for re-election.

In a session on “half truths and ‘gotcha’ politics,” Ms. Bradley of Tides and Mr. Edgar of Common Cause discussed how their left-leaning organizations have responded to attacks from conservative pundits and activists such as radio-show host Glenn Beck and controversial videographer James O’Keefe.

Some of their advice: Don’t wait until you get attacked to communicate about your organization’s work. Building trust is a continuing process, and nonprofits need to make sure they count many supporters who can correct misinformation if and when its spread.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey, president of Robert Wood Johnson, also weighed in briefly on political rancor during a plenary discussion on Monday. Asked what kept her up at night, the foundation president said partisanship.

Foundations and nonprofits need to spend more time thinking about how to communicate about their work “so we don’t get drawn into battles unnecessarily,” she said.

That concern is prompting some employees to consider leaving the nonprofit world, says the study, which was conducted by the TIAA-CREF Institute, an arm of the retirement-fund giant, and Independent Sector.

The telephone survey of 1,000 people found that only 18 percent say they are very or extremely confident that they’re putting aside enough money for retirement. About 45 percent reported that they have considered taking jobs outside the nonprofit world because of financial concerns, including retirement.

“There is a significant level of concern, particularly among early- and mid-career employees, around issues of financial security,” said Roger Ferguson, president of TIAA-CREF, who unveiled the survey results today.

But the news wasn’t all bad: Roughly three-quarters of those surveyed said they had access to a retirement plan, a higher share than in the business world. And 76 percent of nonprofit workers in the survey are putting some money aside for retirement, even if they don’t believe they’re saving enough.

Mr. Ferguson urged nonprofit leaders to find ways to help their workers better prepare for retirement. Among his suggestions: Automatically enroll new workers in retirement plans; provide regular mandatory sessions on financial literacy for workers, and contribute directly to employees’ retirement plans, rather than putting the entire burden fall on the worker. Mr. Ferguson said he recognized that, for smaller, cash-strapped nonprofits, that last option might be “a stretch.”

Of those surveyed, 69 percent had access to “defined-contribution plans,” such as 403(b)s, a plan nonprofits can create to allow employees to set aside retirement money before taxes.  About 30 percent had access to “defined-benefit plans,” which require employers to pay specific amounts per year to retired workers.

A nonprofit chief executive in the audience asked Mr. Ferguson if the charity world was “kidding itself” in thinking that 403(b) and 401(k)-type plans, combined with Social Security, would provide enough money to enable employees to retire comfortably.

Because such plans depend heavily on employees putting money aside, and on investment returns, they are often thought of as less secure than traditional pension plans.

Mr. Ferguson said that nonprofits don’t need to return to traditional pension plans—but workers need to contribute at least 10 percent of their paychecks a year to be sure they have enough for retirement.

His reminder to nonprofit chief executives: “Many of us think about how we can afford our mission, but we as CEO’s also have a responsibility to think about the business side of our missions.”

Complete results from the survey will be released this spring.

Plenty of examples exist of not-so-successful attempts by celebrities to engage in nonprofit work and advocacy. The Eastern Congo Initiative, started by the actor Ben Affleck, is winning some praise as an example of a smart approach.

Last week Mr. Affleck spoke about the project here at the Global Philanthropy Forum, an annual meeting of donors.

Mr. Affleck said he started thinking about getting involved in advocacy work when he was asked, like a lot of celebrities, to help raise awareness about the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“I was sort of the 10th celebrity in line,” he joked. “They had George,” he said, referring to the actor George Clooney.

But in reading about Darfur, Mr. Affleck started to learn about Eastern Congo, where millions of people have died in civil conflict since the late 1990s.

That led to further reading, and then trips to the region, where he met with local groups that are trying to stop the violence and improve the lives of people there.

With help from Williamsworks, a firm that provides advice to donors and nonprofits, Mr. Affleck shaped the Eastern Congo Initiative into a project that not only uses his celebrity to raise awareness about the Congo but also provides grants to community groups and supports advocacy efforts to get the United States government to pay more attention to the region.

In a conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs, the wife of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and a supporter of the Eastern Congo Initiative, Mr. Affleck said he wanted to give money to local groups both to help people in the Congo directly but also to back up his advocacy work with real insights.

“We’ve all seen advocates who have a lot to say, but when I really drill down with them, I don’t have any kind of clear sense of where their opinions are coming from,” he said. “I wanted to have the integrity of doing that and I also wanted to make a tangible difference on the ground.”

Mr. Affleck has assembled a team of supporters, including not only Ms. Jobs but also Howard Buffett, the son of billionaire financier Warren E. Buffett; Pam Omidyar, whose husband, Pierre Omidyar, founded eBay; and Cindy McCain, wife of Arizona Senator John McCain.

But Mr. Affleck said that the instability in the Congo has kept a lot of donors away: “The larger challenges of working in a failed state are real and daunting, and unfortunately they’ve kept away some really experienced, smart donors who might otherwise have made a big difference, or who could make a big difference going forward.”

Like a lot of wealthy people, Ron Cordes started a family foundation with some of the money he received when another company acquired the business he had helped to create. But unlike most of those people, he’s focused more of his attention on using the foundation’s investment portfolio to advance social causes than on making grants.

Mr. Cordes talked about his experience during a session  at the Global Philanthropy Forum, a meeting of donors involved in international causes.

He said that donors are missing a great opportunity by trying to influence social change only by awarding money to charities.

“We’re trying to solve all the problems with about $300-billion a year,” the amount Americans donate to charitable causes, Mr. Cordes said. That’s dwarfed, he noted, by the dollars invested in the stock market, about $41-trillion.

About a year and a half after Mr. Cordes started the Cordes Family Foundation in 2006, he and the foundation’s board set a goal of investing 20 percent of the fund’s assets in social enterprises and businesses that advance causes he cares about.

The foundation has now reached the 29-percent mark—but Mr. Cordes said that its path hasn’t been easy. “The market is still new and fragmented,” he said.

With his giving, Mr. Cordes is seeking to help overcome one barrier he sees: a lack of tools and knowledge on the part of financial advisers about how to invest in social enterprises and socially minded businesses.

His foundation is working with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Calvert Foundation, and others to create Impact Assets, a group that will offer such tools, including an index of the 50 top financial managers who are committed to investing in businesses that advance social causes.

Mr. Cordes said he often hears from people who say they aren’t meeting their fiduciary responsibilities if they don’t invest with the overriding goal of maximizing profits. He said people need to look at it differently—and perhaps the government needs to broaden the definition of “fiduciary responsibility.”

“In my fund, I believe we’re not fulfilling our fiduciary responsibility if we’re not investing for impact,” he said.

Read more about the index of financial managers in an article in the latest issue of The Chronicle and more about Mr. Cordes’s philanthropy and other donors like him.

Three people who have  signed the Giving Pledge—a commitment to give away at least half of their fortunes—spoke on Thursday about why they think rich people should donate more and what they hope the pledge will achieve.

John Morgridge, chairman emeritus of Cisco, and his wife, Tashia, were joined by Lorry Lokey, founder of Business Wire, for an evening conversation at the Global Philanthropy Forum, an annual meeting for donors.

The Morgridges were among a small group who attended the very first dinner organized by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in May 2009, even before the pledge idea was fully baked. Mr. Morgridge said that people at the initial dinner floated the idea of doing videos and interviews to promote the pledge to others but instead decided that hosting more dinners would be the best way to try to recruit other wealthy people to join.

After that first dinner, the Morgridges said they took a little time to think over whether they wanted to sign the pledge. Mr. Lokey said he agreed while on the phone with Mr. Buffett, who called him with the proposal.

“I said yes right away, because the money was already gone,” joked Mr. Lokey, who has already given most of his fortune to education, medical research, and other causes. “When you pitch in and make it public, it encourages others.”

He continued: “We’ve got all kinds of billionaires sitting on their rear ends and doing nothing. [Mr. Buffett] said he wanted me to be an example of how far beyond 50 percent you can go.”

Mr. Morgridge said he also felt that many rich people were spending too much of their money on extravagances and could afford to donate much more. He and his wife started the Tosa Foundation, in Portola Valley, Calif., and are big supporters of education and other causes.

“This valley has a lot of wealth, and, for my taste, a disproportionate amount of it is spent on homes that they live in for two weeks of a year,” he said. “We didn’t create all this wealth, we capitalized on an environment that permitted us to create it.”

But persuading other people to publicly commit to give more of their money away hasn’t been all that easy, the donors said.

Mr. Lokey said he was uncomfortable asking other people to donate. “I’d make a lousy development director.”

The Morgridges hosted the third Giving Pledge dinner at their house, which they said resulted in only one additional person signing the agreement.

Many people seemed to be held back by concerns about how to treat their children in their financial planning, the Morgridges said. Others just didn’t seem to be thinking much about a long-term approach to giving. Said Mr. Morgridge: “I was a little surprised at both dinners that there were a fair number of people who really had no philanthropic plan.”

Another challenge has been convincing those people who give but who do so anonymously. The Morgridges started out in that camp, said Ms. Morgridge. Their first large gifts were anonymous. But, as time went on, “people found out about it anyway,” she said. “We finally realized it was kind of a sham that we were anonymous.”

Asked about concerns surrounding the undemocratic nature of mega philanthropy, Mr. Morgridge pointed out that people use money to buy influence in all realms, not just through their charitable giving.

“You’re not worried about the lobbyists in Washington, D.C., who influence how government money is spent? You’re not worried about the money that’s being spent to influence politics in this country?” he said. “To say we’re less trustworthy than the government or the lobbyists or the corporations—I don’t think you can prove that case.”

All three donors emphasized how much they enjoy giving.

“You can give $30-million for student aid and every spring the letters roll in thanking you,” said Mr. Lokey. “It’s a wonderful life.”

Could a national effort to fight malnutrition, backed with significant money from the World Bank, have no impact?

Yes, according to Howard White, executive director for the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, a nonprofit dedicated to determining what works in international antipoverty efforts. Mr. White was among more than two dozen speakers who participated in the opening day of the Global Philanthropy Forum, an annual meeting for donors.

His speech underscored the importance of testing whether programs work before putting more money into expanding them.

Mr. White described the Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project, an effort to fight malnutrition in Bangladesh supported by the World Bank. The program provided mothers with counseling on nutrition, supplemental feeding to severely malnourished children, and other kinds of support.

But the program didn’t work: A study by Mr. White and others, who were brought in after questions had been raised about the effort, found that there was no difference in malnutrition levels between people participating in the program and those who weren’t.

Why not? First, he said, the program focused on the wrong people. It sought to change the way mothers thought about their children’s nutrition—but in rural Bangladesh, it’s the men who go shopping for food and the mother-in-laws who make most household decisions. So trying to change the behavior of mothers had very little impact on family health, Mr. White said.

Second, changing people’s behavior takes time. “The idea that you can go into a country and in 18 months change its practices is rather optimistic,” Mr. White said.

Also, the neediest children were often being left out of the supplementary feeding programs, while children who didn’t qualify were often included. Mr. White said that nutrition experts running the programs weren’t able to assess which children ought to participate.

Finally, in a quarter of the cases, women were giving their children the supplementary food but then skipping their regular meals.

Lack of Comparisons

So why did the World Bank back the program in the first place? It did conduct an evaluation, Mr. White said, after it decided to expand the program across the country. But the study looked only at the health of people in areas where the program was being run; it didn’t compare those people’s health with the health of people in areas that weren’t part of the program.

And at the time, malnutrition rates were falling across Bangladesh, most likely due to broader changes in the economy, Mr. White noted. But because the bank didn’t compare malnutrition levels across the nation, he said, it erroneously credited the program with reducing those malnutrition rates.

Mr. White urged donors to remember the consequences of throwing money at bad programs: “Children died because the World Bank spent money in the wrong way.”

At the closing session of the Council on Foundations meeting on Tuesday, a majority of people voted to do away with the charitable deduction and other tax breaks that benefit foundations.

OK, not really.

It was all part of a mock trial the council put together—with philanthropy as the defendant—to debate whether foundations are fulfilling their mission of advancing the common good.

The sentence for philanthropy, if found guilty of falling short on its mission: losing its tax-exempt status.

Acting as prosecutor, Gara LaMarche, president of the Atlantic Philanthropies, argued that philanthropy has failed in three key ways.

First, it too often acts in its own self-interest. One example: Foundation leaders’ opposition to President Obama’s proposal to cap the charitable deduction, which the president floated as a way to help pay for a health-care overhaul. Mr. LaMarche said that for foundation leaders to push back against a key way to pay for the health-care bill, which seeks to narrow the yawning gulf between rich and poor people, “seems to me to be plainly wrong.”

Second, he said, philanthropy doesn’t take nearly enough risks and tends to shy away from the biggest issues of today, such as poverty, inequality, and climate change.

He added: “Even when we do take risks and stumble, we’re like Eddie Haskell job applicants, who, when pressed to name their weaknesses in job interviews, say they really ought to get more sleep and not spend 80 hours at the office.”

Finally, Mr. LaMarche argued that foundations aren’t sufficiently committed to diversity within their organizations and that they don’t reflect the people they serve.

Philanthropy’s ‘Greatest Hits’

Serving as philanthropy’s defense lawyer, Ralph Smith, executive vice president for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, sought to remind the crowd of what philanthropy has accomplished.

The hospice system, the 911 emergency call system, white lines on highways, the Hubble telescope, “Sesame Street,” microfinance, disease research: All of those advances were enabled by philanthropic dollars, Mr. Smith said.

The foundation world is likewise full of exceptional grant makers, people like Vartan Gregorian, Emmett Carson, and Sherece West, he said.

Even if you abhor the causes that some donors choose to support, Mr. Smith said, society is better off because of philanthropy’s pluralism.

“Ralph’s argument amounts to a greatest hits of philanthropy,” said Mr. LaMarche, when it was his turn for a rebuttal.

Mr. Smith, in turn, conceded that philanthropy hasn’t made as much progress as he’d like on diversity and other issues but that its performance today is better than a decade ago. “Our job is to continue the progress, even if it’s incremental,” he said.

Meanwhile, both men joked about how they were strong-armed into their roles as prosecutor and defender by Steve Gunderson, the council’s president, and acknowledged that their arguments were exaggerated.

The trial resulted in a hung jury: Of the panel of twelve audience members, 10 voted that  philanthropy was guilty of falling short of its mission and two dissented.

Perhaps grant makers will get to see a retrial at next year’s council meeting. But on Tuesday, they headed back to their hometowns, where many will continue to make the case for philanthropy’s privileged status to deficit-minded lawmakers.

Foundations need to change their message to legislators, to focus on how philanthropy serves people and reduces the burden on government, said Steve Gunderson, president of the Council on Foundations, on the closing day of the council’s annual meeting. Philanthropy requires help increasing its resources so it can do more, not less, he said.

“We have to make the case that philanthropy isn’t a special interest, but it’s an entity in American society that’s a partner in building our community,” he said. “Every item on our legislative agenda is designed in a way to increase our ability to serve.”

Philanthropy also needs better research about how proposed changes to the charitable deduction and other tax policies would affect giving, said Carol S. Larson, president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

“These aren’t going to be simple conversations, but we are going to need to have them,” Ms. Larson said. She added that both the council and Independent Sector, a coalition of charities and grant makers, are studying how various kinds of tax reforms would affect the nonprofit field.

Foundations can play a more effective role in the future of media and journalism, say the authors of a report on grant making to journalism organizations during the Council on Foundations annual conference.

Michele McLellan, a consultant for the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami, offered five things foundations should know about journalism and media grant making:

• This is everyone’s issue. “It’s pretty simple: If you want to engage citizens in solving problems in your community, they have to know the problem exists,” Ms. McLellan said.
• You can build on what you’re already doing. “You don’t have to remake your foundation as a journalism funder to do media grant making,” Ms. McLellan said. “It actually works really well if you use media grants to build out the areas you’re already funding.”
• You can start without a lot of money. “Many foundations start small,” she said.
• Good journalism requires independence. “If you do a journalism project, you can fund certain coverage topics, but you can’t dictate what specific stories are covered,” she said.
• Digital media must be targeted. Too many organization hope to create a “magic Web site” that attracts visitors from the onset, Ms. McLellan said. Foundations should do their research to see how a target population consumes media before supporting a project.

Eric Newton, a senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation, offered five suggestions to foundations that want to get started in this type of grant making:

• Map how your community receives and shares its news. “Foundations that are doing mapping early on are creating more tailored and more efficient approaches that are getting them better impact,” he said.
• Run a contest to find new voices. “Contests are great because they put foundations in a leadership role but also because they open you up to new ideas and new people,” Mr. Newton said.
• Expand your own digital expertise. Mr. Newton suggests that those who are interested in journalism projects should start by building their own skills in digital media and by urging program staff to do the same.
• Partner with a local news organization. In general, traditional media are more open to partnerships than they were a few years ago due to tightened budgets, Mr. Newton said.
• Help create a public-interest news organization. The most complex way to get started, Mr. Newton said, is to take the lead in creating a news organization. But it’s important for grant makers to take steps from the beginning to make the organization self-sustaining.

An afternoon session here at the Council on Foundations annual meeting tackled the big questions behind foundation-board diversity, including perhaps the biggest: how to explain the gap between talking about making boards more diverse and the current reality.

According to recent studies, 8 percent to 14 percent of nonprofit CEO’s and board members are minorities. Many in the discussion session believed that the gap was a lack of will. While most people would like to see foundation boards become more diverse, very few foundations have put in the necessary leg work and pushed themselves outside of their comfort zones to ask people from different backgrounds, speakers said.

“I don’t believe the will will be expressed by most boards whether they are philanthropic boards or corporate boards,” said Charlynn Goins, chairman of the board at the New York Community Trust.

Ms. Goins said she believes some external pressure needed to spur boards to become more diverse.

Continue the conversation here. What do you think? Post your thoughts about how to improve foundation-board diversity—or the diversity of charity leadership as a whole—in the comments below.

Plus, read an opinion article from the latest issue of The Chronicle, in which leaders of three of the biggest foundations in the United States urge other grant makers to do more to make a push for diversity.