The controversial move by the nation’s largest breast-cancer charity will cut hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual grants from Komen chapters to Planned Parenthood clinics, primarily for breast exams.

The charity is now facing a significant outcry from Planned Parenthood supporters in social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Planned Parenthood helped fan the flames by posting a message to its Facebook page and on Twitter late Tuesday afternoon that announced Komen’s decision.

“Komen has been an ally and supported [Planned Parenthood] health centers to provide nearly 170,000 breast exams in the past five years—and we’re determined to make sure it won’t stop thousands of women from getting the care they need,” it wrote on its Facebook page. “Stay tuned.”

The posting prompted more than 1,000 comments during its first 24 hours online—most of which expressed outrage about the decision.

On Twitter, one Planned Parenthood supporter got creative, making a mock greeting card from the Web site Someecards that read “Thank you for cutting off funding to cancer screening programs in order to prove that you are pro-life.”

Komen, meanwhile, waited until Wednesday morning to discuss the controversy on its Facebook page.

“Grant-making decisions are not about politics—our priority is and always will be the women we serve,” Komen wrote in its Facebook posting. “Making this issue political or leveraging it for fundraising purposes would be a disservice to women.”

The posting had already received nearly 2,000 comments by midday Wednesday—the vast majority of which criticize the charity. Many of those who have posted comments say they have given money to Komen previously but will not contribute to the organization again because of its decision.

Because Planned Parenthood is at the center of the national political debate over abortion, Komen’s decision was bound to generate controversy.

But some social-media experts say Komen prompted the explosive reaction on Facebook and Twitter because it remained silent on those networks for far too long.

“They took a deep dive into the hot swirling waters head first (but apparently eyes shut),” writes Kivi Leroux Miller, a nonprofit expert, on her blog. “No matter what they do from here on out, they will be forced to pick sides, and that’s just awful for the Komen brand.

“If they stick by their decision, they will endear themselves to pro-life women, and lose the pro-choice. If they give in to the pressure and petitions, they will win back the pro-choice women, but anger the pro-life. It’s a no-win situation that could have been avoided had they developed a communications strategy on this decision at the start.”

What do you think? Did Komen miss an opportunity to frame its decision—or was the social-media backlash unavoidable? Post a comment to share your thoughts.

The Internet encyclopedia, a nonprofit, is shutting itself off from public view to protest two bills pending in Congress that critics say could “break the Internet.” Other nonprofits are also taking steps to protest the measures.

The Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the House, would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against Web sites that may be guilty of copyright infringement or selling counterfeit goods. Because search engines could be sued for hosting such content, they are likely to take them out of search results, and service providers such as cable and telephone companies, will probably block the sites to avoid legal trouble. The Senate is considering Protect IP, a similar bill to protect intellectual property.

The bills’ supporters say the legislation is needed to help protect copyright holders.

Opponents say the proposals are an attempt to censor information on the Internet and some sites, including Wikipedia, are going dark today in protest.

“What we’ll see is what the Internet could look like if SOPA passes,” says Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, which opposes the bill. “It will be interesting to see how many of us can make it through the day without referencing Wikipedia at least once.”

The protest could affect other sites that nonprofits use daily, such as WordPress.com.

Many of the Internet’s biggest sites—including Google, Facebook, and Twitter—publicly oppose the bills but will not be joining the blackout. Google plans to add a special message to its home page on Wednesday about the bills.

Several other nonprofits are joining the Nonprofit Technology Network in opposing the bills, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, and Reporters Without Borders. Ms. Ross said her organization plans to take down its blog Wednesday in protest but will leave most of the organization’s site up.

“I think that nonprofits should definitely be engaged in this,” Ms. Ross says. “There are all kinds of unintended consequences, and congress just isn’t a body that understands technology or should be regulating technology at this level.”

The foundation was started by Craig Newmark, an Internet entrepreneur who created Craigslist, the popular but sometimes-controversial Web site that enables people around the world to buy, sell, and trade everything from electronics to furniture.

In his letter, Mr. Luckow said Craigslist will continue its philanthropy through a “charitable fund” but provided no further details. The foundation points people to  Craigconnects, a Web site and blog that Mr. Newmark recently started to build support for nonprofit groups that he personally supports.

The foundation, best known for its annual Nonprofit Boot Camp, which trains new and aspiring charity leaders, has signaled that its ninth boot camp will still be held in San Francisco this spring. But it has yet to set the date for the daylong gathering.

Mr. Luckow’s letter said that the foundation’s staff of five is working “to find appropriate homes” for its programs, including the boot camp and LikeMinded, a nine-month-old social-media site where charities with similar causes can interact.

Some nonprofit leaders are glad the foundation is ending operations. Jan Masaoka, chief executive of the California Association of Nonprofits, said she was unhappy that organization competed with other nonprofit groups for donations. And while the boot-camp events were a good idea in theory, she said, “the content is very weak.”

Mr. Luckow said that the foundation planned to complete its “wind down” by the end of March, but it will keep podcasts, videos, and other online resources on its Web site through the end of this year.

Dig deeper: Read The Chronicle‘s cover article on Internet tycoons, including Mr. Newmark.

The Food Bank for New York City has found a way around that problem by moving its food drives online, allowing donors to shop in virtual grocery aisles, give cash donations, and even start their own food drives.

“Holding a virtual food drive doesn’t add any cost to the Food Bank for New York City; it only helps provide food,” said Dan Buckley, the food bank’s senior online communications manager.

The concept isn’t new to food banks, or even to the Food Bank for New York City, which has had a similar site for some time. But a redesign of the site last summer added features that made its online food drives more closely resemble the experience of online shopping. And the change has made a significant difference in how donors use the site.

The food bank has already seen a 120-percent increase in donations through the site this fiscal year, Mr. Buckley said, well surpassing its goal of 20 percent. That number is expected to grow, as the food bank’s fiscal year ends in July 2012.

Much of the early growth has come through small donations.

FedEx, which regularly works with the food bank, offered a matching grant to the food bank if it raised $5,000 online. Mr. Buckley sent one e-mail, both to people who had given less than $100 to the food bank in the past year and those who had given nothing, and the response was immediate. The food bank met the goal within two-and-a-half hours and donors have given more than $10,000 through FedEx’s page.

“The tool was really developed to provide a playful and engaging experience for people to give,” Mr. Buckley says. “One of the big potentials that environment holds is to encourage giving by people who may not already be donors or food-bank supporters.”

Part of the “engaging experience” is teaching donors, said Margarette Purvis, the food bank’s chief executive. Every item displayed on the site is a product donors can easily understand: like three gallons of milk or 25 pounds of bell peppers. By dragging your mouse over an item, you learn more about how the food bank buys and distributes it.

“It provides something that everyone just collecting cans on their own could never do, because now you see the value—the real value.” Ms. Purvis says.

Every donor to the site is noted in the food bank’s database as well, so the organization can send future appeals and take other steps to build ties to people who have given, Mr. Buckley said.

The development of the updated site was paid for entirely by the grocery service Peapod by Stop & Shop. The food bank also sold a sponsorship for the grains and beans section of the site to the food companies Carolina Enriched Rice and Ronzoni.

Mr. Jobs, the late Apple founder, was the focus of two of the most popular posts, both questioning his legacy on philanthropy. Mr. Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, was also mentioned twice in the five most-viewed posts—one about his new nonprofit-focused blog Craigconnects and another about a graphic he commissioned about large charities on social media.

The top five most-viewed posts on Social Philanthropy in 2011 were:

A Look at Large Charities on Social Media
Craig Newmark, the Internet entrepreneur, examined how charities use Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

Facebook Updates Could Give Nonprofits Better Visibility
The social network seeks ways to help people promote causes and ideas that are important, not just those that were posted most recently.

Is Apple Anti-Charity?
The head of Public Radio Exchange takes Apple to task for preventing nonprofit groups from soliciting donations on iPhones and iPads.

Steve Jobs and Philanthropy
While Steve Jobs was not outwardly philanthropic, his innovations touched the nonprofit world in profound ways.

Craigslist Founder Starts Site Featuring Nonprofits
The site is similar to a blog, highlighting handpicked nonprofits and a directory of other organizations.

So many searched, in fact, that they made “donate to Japan,” “Red Cross Japan,” and “Japan relief” the three fastest-rising charitable searches in the United States this year.

Google this week released its annual Zeitgeist report, which tallies the 10 most popular and fastest-rising searches in a wide range of categories. To come up with the fastest-rising terms, it compared searches this year to those in 2010.

Some may not be surprising. The Second Mile, a charity founded by the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, ranked fifth. Searches for the charity increased rapidly after news came out in November about a grand jury investigating accusations that Mr. Sandusky molested several young boys. (He has denied those accusations.)

Several large charities are also included in the list. The Make-a-Wish Foundation ranks No. 9. Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army also appear on the list, both with the word “donation.” Also in the top 10 is “Joe Corbi,” a company that supplies pizza, candy, and other food to Little Leagues, parent-teacher groups, and other organizations that want to sell the items to raise money.

The complete list:

1. Donate to Japan

2. Red Cross Japan

3. Japan Relief

4. South Sudan

5. Second Mile Foundation

6. Goodwill Donation Center

7. Joe Corbi

8. Headstart

9. Make A Wish

10. Salvation Army Donations

To see a visualization of increasing in searches on these terms, visit Google’s Zeitgeist 2011 site.

John and Hank Green are on a mission against the bad in the world. And they have an eager legion of supporters who are more than willing to help the cause—in part by raising tens of thousands of dollars for charity and helping worthy groups get more visibility on YouTube.

Their Project for Awesome video challenge, celebrating its fifth year this Saturday, sprang out a series of video messages from the Greens, who call themselves the Vlogbrothers on YouTube. Their followers call themselves “Nerdfighters,” after a joke in one of the brother’s videos. “The idea is that they fight for nerds, like freedom fighters fight for freedom,” says John Green, who is in the video above.

The brothers, who are professional video bloggers (John Green is also a novelist and Hank Green is also a musician and an environmental writer) raised more than $100,000 for charities during the event last year and attracted 10 million views to videos about charities. Their campaign became the most popular topic on YouTube for 36 hours.

The Project for Awesome has similar goals for the 2011 campaign.

“It’s supposed to be fun,” John Green says. “All of my fulfilling experiences with philanthropy have been fun.”

On Saturday, the brothers and fans of their video blog will upload videos supporting their favorite nonprofits to YouTube and donate to the charities through the Web site ProjectforAwesome.com starting on Friday night.

The brothers, whose parents are both nonprofit workers, created the first annual Project for Awesome in 2007 and “hijacked” the YouTube home page. They have conducted the event every year since, and YouTube is now a supporter.

This year, the brothers have made the event more formal, creating a new nonprofit organization called the Foundation to Decrease WorldSuck to collect and distribute donations to the organizations featured in the best Project for Awesome videos. The brothers also encourage viewers to donate directly to the charities featured.

Beyond the money, the videos could be the biggest benefit to nonprofits, John Green says.

“We’re always trying to get the video quality to a point where nonprofit organizations will use it, where it’s not just about reaching out to your own viewers [on YouTube] but about reaching out to the charities you feel passionate about,” he says.

In the video below, Hank Green explains this year’s Project for Awesome.

The American Red Cross, Create Jobs for USA, Global Citizen Year, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Kiva, and Room to Read, now have pages that feature new banners and space to display a promoted tweet with a video.

And these early adopters say they expect the new layout to help them connect more effectively with followers and others who see their Twitter pages.

“If they come to our Twitter page for the first time, it’s a great way to take a peek at what we are all about in a more curated way than there has been in the past,” said Shauna Carey, communications associate at Room to Read.

The organization this week promoted a tweet that encourages supporters to contribute to the organization’s “holiday wish list” campaign. The promoted tweet includes a link that directs supporters to a donation page and a video that explains the campaign.

Gloria Huang, senior social engagement specialist at the American Red Cross, says her organization is using its promoted tweet area to showcase a new video, which is part of a broader holiday giving campaign.

“It’s nice to have more customization in the profile,” she said. “We are going through a bit of a brand redesign right now, and it was a good chance to get that out there for the first time on social-media platforms.”

Ms. Huang said doesn’t have enough information to tell if the new layout had made a difference but does believe that the tweet and video have seen higher traffic than usual.

Going forward, she said she believes the organization will be using that space to showcase videos, slide shows, and other multimedia.

Ms. Huang said the new features are easy to set up. She said she also likes Twitter’s new “Interactions” page, which pulls together new followers, mentions, retweets, and lists in one place.

See images of all six of the nonprofits new profile pages below.

The new brand pages, which will be free, will allow organizations to promote a tweet to display at the top of their pages. Photos and videos can also be attached to those messages. The brand pages also provide more space for organizations to promote their messages and won’t display advertising from other groups or companies.

Twitter has already selected 21 large for-profit companies to test the pages–including Coca-Cola and Chevrolet–but those brand pages can be viewed only if your account has been upgraded to the new Twitter layout.

Other new features included in the new release that may affect your organization:

• New labels. The current links that appear at the top of Twitter pages will be replaced by new categories. Gone is “profile,” which will now be labeled “me.“  Other new labels include the words “connect” and “discover.”

• Embeddable tweets. You will no longer have to use a third-party service to add tweets to your Web site. Tweets can now be added to a Web page with a single line of code. If you use WordPress.com to host your blogs, for example, you can simply paste the URL of a tweet to appear on a Web page.

• Changes to Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck, the popular social-media management software, now defaults to use Twitter’s link-shortening and photo-sharing services, so you may have to adjust the settings to use your services. It also gives credit to the first account to send popular, often-retweeted messages.

How will your nonprofit use these new features?

That’s one of the comparisons made in a new graphic from Network for Good, a fund-raising and volunteerism Web site that celebrates its 10th anniversary this month.

In 2001, the average donation through the site was $226. But this year the average gift is $73, a change that Network for Good interprets as a sign that online giving has “gone mainstream.”

Here’s the full graphic: