Remember the “Girl Effect,” the Nike Foundation’s two-year-old initiative to encourage philanthropic and government investments in girls?

Thanks largely to a catchy video (below), the effort has become something of a phenomenon, succeeding in helping to make girls a bigger focus of global antipoverty efforts. But Anna Carella, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Vanderbilt University, writes on the Aid Watch blog that while the effort seems like a “godsend for those who have been working to improve the lives of women, it may actually be damaging to women.”

Her objections:

• It reinforces stereotypes that women are naturally more caring than men and doesn’t do anything to encourage men to do more at home.
• The video claims that putting more women to work will drive economic development—yet women already make up a bigger percentage of the workforce in poor countries…

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It was, perhaps, philanthropy’s biggest news of the year: 40 of America’s wealthiest families announced in August that they were joining Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in pledging to give at least half their money away.

Now, however, a debate is stirring about how successful the Giving Pledge has really been. The pledge hasn’t “visibly inspired” any new big gifts or attracted additional signatures since August, writes reporter Stephanie Strom in Wednesday’s New York Times. Mr. Buffett, however, says he expects others to sign on soon.

Ellen Remmer, president of the Philanthropic Initiative, writes on her organization’s blog that the Giving Pledge appears to be “stuttering a bit.” That’s largely due to the economic crisis, she says.

“Billionaires may not want the world to know they are billionaires,” she argues. “And the world at large may not like being reminded that these folks …

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Most donors choose a few areas to support about which they are passionate—the arts and education, say, or climate change and child health.

Sean Stannard-Stockton, an adviser to donors and a Chronicle contributor, says on his blog that he’s come across a number of foundations and donors that don’t think about giving in that way. Instead, he says, they are “issue agnostic.”

The Lodestar Foundation, for example, describes itself as not being “focused on any specific field of interest and focus instead on leveraging resources.” Many donors support “social entrepreneurs,” regardless of what issue they seek to tackle. And a client of Mr. Stannard-Stockton’s says he cares less about the particular issue and more about the opportunity to help expand successful nonprofit models.

Mr. Stannard-Stockton says such issue-agnostic donors make him wonder if conventional philanthropy advice—…

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Nicholas Kristof’s recent front-page article in The New York Times Magazine, “The D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution,” highlights Americans who, struck by poverty in the developing world, dash off to do something about it.

The stories are inspiring. But Dave Algoso, a graduate student at New York University, writes on the Foreign Policy Web site that they don’t convey a key message: Alleviating poverty is a lot harder than refurbishing a basement, fixing a leaky toilet, or repairing other problems for which this “fix it” attitude is appropriate.

A community’s needs are often too complex and nuanced for outsiders to really understand, Mr. Algoso writes. Moreover, outside money and volunteers can distort local economies, politics, and culture, he says.

For example, local businesses lose out when charities provide donated goods for free, and local governments can face less pressure to…

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