One topic of discussion on the conference’s opening day was the planners’ choice of a gilded, opulent conference site set high above Rome on 15 acres of gardens. The European Foundation Centre says that the Hilton Rome Cavalieri was “chosen because it is one of the only hotels in Rome capable of hosting such a large conference.”

But many participants had misgivings about the issue, or had discussed it with fellow attendees. The choice of venue was somewhat ostentatious given the conference theme of ending poverty, said Haki H. Abazi, a program officer at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Mr. Abazi is also a board member of the Trust for Civil Society in Central & Eastern Europe, in Sofia, Bulgaria, and said that when that organization searched for its next conference site, it chose an old factory in Bratislava, the Slovak Republic.

Meanwhile, Marilyn D. Clancy, senior consultant to the Headwaters Group, a philanthropic-services company in St. Paul, said she felt the hotel and the lunch with wine and all the perks served to participants were apropos. “Italy is about eating and drinking well, and to Italians, this isn’t decadent,” she said, referring to the conference hosts, the Fondazione Rome.

Ms. Clancy added: “Most people here today aren’t suffering, but they are working for those who do. This could be taking place in a tent in the desert, but the mindset would still be, how can we lift others up and give the poor more?”