The Robin Hood Foundation  and the X Prize Foundation this week announced a new competition designed to find the best solutions available to fighting poverty.

Robin Hood has raised $19-million to get the competition off the ground and plans soon to announce the specific goal of the first contest, which might focus on curbing homelessness or improving education or other issues that contribute to poverty.

[Editor's note: The following paragraph has been revised for accuracy.] The goal is to reward new ideas and programs that Robin Hood will test in New York. After a new program has been running for a certain amount of time, a review committee of officials from both foundations will evaluate it and award the prize if the program is deemed successful.

Awards of at least $1-million will be handed out, but more might be awarded for ambitious efforts.

“Robin Hood has been fighting poverty day by day, block by block, for 24 years, and in that 24 years we have discovered some extraordinary interventions that we think have vastly improved the way in which services are delivered and have increased the likelihood that poor people are going to be able to lift themselves out of poverty,” said David Saltzman, executive director of the Robin Hood Foundation.  With the prize, “we want to find a way of attracting the best thinking from all around world.”

Watch a Chronicle of Philanthropy video on how the X Prize Foundation creates its contests.

In 2009, Ford pledged $100-million to improve high-school education; with today’s announcement, half that money will be narrowly focused on lengthening school time.

“Over the past few months, the idea of expanding and redesigning learning time for our kids, for America’s children, has been gaining the kind of momentum very few movements have gained in a short period of time,” said Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford, in making the announcement. “Every week there’s been news, commentary, and action on the ground,” including a Congressional hearing that discussed the idea.

Ford’s money will back a new coalition, Time to Succeed, which the foundation started along with the National Center on Time & Learning. Members include Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., and Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America.

Mr. Ubiñas and other coalition members who participated in the announcement said that extended school time is a proven way to improve education and student achievement.

All of the schools in Phoenix’s Balsz Elementary School district, for example, are now labeled as “performing” or better, compared with half that were “underperforming” or “failing” before the district expanded its school year to 200 days in 2009.

Send an e-mail to Caroline Preston.

In a session that was designed to resemble a form of speed dating—experts had just five minutes to sum up what was wrong with philanthropy—Andy Goodman, a marketing consultant to charities and foundations, criticized foundations for focusing too much on numbers and data. None of that matters if the people a foundation wants to reach are not open to what the data show, he said.

“All the data in the world is not going to change people’s minds,” said Mr. Goodman. “If you want to change what people think and if you want to create change, the first thing you need to do is change the story in their heads.”

Emmett Carson of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, chided foundations for not living up to their missions. While grant makers like to describe themselves as “change agents,” they don’t take bold actions often enough. He showed a slide of a man in a suit with his head stuck in the stand, and asked, “What are foundations doing?”

One sign of how little foundations interact with the public, he said: Just 50 of the roughly 76,000 foundations in the United States participate in Glasspockets, a Foundation Center project designed to make it easy for anybody to find out what foundations do with their money.

He said foundation unwillingness to interact regularly with the public has persuaded too many Americans to “think we really don’t care.” And as a result, grant makers are ignored. “If your foundation is not being asked to speak on your mission,” he said, “then you have work to do.”

Actor Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House (FOX BROADCASTING COMPANY / LAVINE, MICHAEL / Album/Newscom)

Maybe you saw the episode of Fox TV’s “House” in which the curmudgeonly lead character realizes just before a patient’s death that she’s suffering from a tapeworm in her brain. Or a scene from the new Fox show “Touch,” in which a group of African women stand up to a man who is abusing his girlfriend.

Some of America’s biggest philanthropies are helping to shape those kinds of storylines in an effort to educate the public about global health and other causes they care about.

Through its Hollywood, Health & Society program, the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center takes Hollywood producers and writers to developing countries and introduces them to global-health experts to inform them about social causes.

Long supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the center four years ago began receiving money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the California Endowment. More recently, it has received grants from the Barr and Grantham foundations and the Skoll Global Threats Fund to extend its work to include climate change.

“We inspire writers and we inform them, but we don’t tell them what to write,” says Sandra de Castro Buffington, director of Hollywood, Health & Society. She spoke Tuesday in Washington at the annual conference of InterAction, a membership group of international aid nonprofits.

The Hollywood, Health & Society program has helped shape more than 300 stories on television shows in the last two years, according to Ms. de Castro Buffington. She said the stories can be more successful than other types of publicity.

More people called an AIDS hotline during and after an episode of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” in which a character is diagnosed with HIV, than during a public-service announcement for a national “get tested” campaign or a special about AIDS televised on MTV, she said.

One reason is that so few Americans—including those who work at foundations and charities—have a connection to service members.

But grant makers could find much to do to support military families, many of whom struggle under the crushing weight of problems that result from multiple deployments such as broken marriages, domestic abuse, unemployment, mental-health issues, and, increasingly, suicide.

Unlike service members in past wars, this generation’s veterans are less inclined to seek help through formal channels like the Department of Defense or Veterans Affairs and instead go online to seek information from other sources, said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

That makes it tough for both government and nonprofits to keep track of those who need help, he said.

“The one question funders do not ask enough [of grant seekers] is, Can you find veterans?” said. Mr. Rieckhoff.

Once they find people in need, nonprofits and grant makers must devise smart ways to help and to avoid the kinds of events some organizations now run.

“New vets are not going to want to go to some kind of national PTSD day. We do things like family days, a marathon, film screenings, a baseball game,” he said. “They don’t want to sit around talking about being vets all the time. They want to engage with the community.”

Another challenge is the lack of good data on how much foundation money goes to help veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families, said Steven Lawrence, senior director of research at the Foundation Center. Many grant makers may support a mental-health or housing program that help veterans but also help others—so the money doesn’t get reported as aid to people who have served in wars.

What is needed, said Mr. Lawrence, is for foundations and charities alike to improve the way they report on their giving and programs.

“Data can really help foundations to tell this story,” he said, but grant makers need to get better at supplying those data.

Send an e-mail to Maria Di Mento.

As one veteran told Kevin Walker to recognize when he took over as head of the Northwest Area Foundation, no matter how smart a new strategy a foundation chief wants to put in place, he or she must realize “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Sandra Hernández, chief executive of the San Francisco Foundation, said the best way to get to know an organization’s culture is to listen to employees. Walk around the organization and talk to people. Eat in the kitchen once in a while, she suggests, and get to work understanding the ways a new chief executive’s lack of knowledge could harm the organization.

For Ms. Hernández, who came to her post some years ago with no knowledge of investment management or of the foundation’s many donors, that meant finding a mentor who could teach her about the intricacies of endowments and making sure she learned as much as she could about each one of the foundation’s biggest donors.

Once a new leader has spent some time running a foundation, it is important to make sure that the board conducts a review of the leader’s work, said Carol Larson, head of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. She has had such a review each time she has taken a new role at the foundation, she says, and she considers it a kind of “tune-up” for a chief executive.

“Done the right way,” said Ms. Larson, “reviews can be really helpful and a good check on how you’re doing and how what you are doing is being perceived.”

She also suggested creating a peer support group of leaders from other organizations as a way to conduct regular discussions about topics no one else can understand.

However, she said, just as important is finding a “buddy” in the foundation, someone a leader can count on to speak the truth even when it is critical and who can give honest feedback. “Identify that person and cultivate a relationship of candidness and trust,” she said.

Send an e-mail to Maria Di Mento.

As 1,300 grant makers gathered in the city to start their annual meeting Sunday, they examined what foundations can do better as cities erupt in crises such natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast or the damage the recession wracked on Detroit, or the racial tensions that inflamed this city.

In Los Angeles, one reason the city has grown stronger since the riots, said Manuel Pastor, a professor at University of Southern California, is that much of the Los Angeles philanthropy world joined together with local government, neighborhood, and business leaders to find ways to help blacks, Asians, and Latinos learn more about one another and grow more tolerant of their differences.

Another lesson is that change comes slowly and requires persistent efforts.

In New Orleans, foundations, civic leaders, and others shared information about efforts to bring entrepreneurs to the city and get local citizens involved in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, said Allison Plyer of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

Although that work helped bring about change, such collaboration needs to continue, said Flozell Hathorn Daniels Jr., of the Foundation for Louisiana. Whites continue to earn more than blacks, housing is more scarce than it was before the hurricanes, and many of the city’s residents are jobless, he said.

Grant makers in Detroit face similar challenges as the city grapples with a 38-percent poverty rate. Carol Goss, head of the Skillman Foundation, said foundations and governments realize they have no choice but to work closely together to rescue the city.

“Philanthropy has a lot of resources like influence and data, and we could come together to share these resources,” said Ms. Goss. “And we as a sector can speak up and push for change.”

Send an e-mail to Maria Di Mento.

The Giving Pledge is a campaign by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to spur philanthropy by very wealthy people. Members who sign the pledge agree to donate at least half their fortunes during their lifetimes or on their deaths.

New recruits unveiled today include:

* William and Karen Ackman, who made their fortune from hedge funds.

* Arthur M. Blank, of Home Depot

* Edgar M. Bronfman, former chief executive of the Seagram Company.

* The financier Glenn Dubin and his wife, Eva.

* Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, the businessman, and his wife, Charline.

* Michael Moritz and Harriet Heyman, whose wealth stems from venture capital.

* Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal

* John Sall, a co-founder of software company SAS, and his wife, Ginger.

* Henry Samueli, a co-founder of Broadcom, and his wife, Susan.

* John, Susan, and John Michael Sobrato, of real-estate wealth

* The businessman Theodore Stanley and his wife, Vada.

The 81 Giving Pledge members range in age from 27 (Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Mark Zuckerberg) to 96 (David Rockefeller). They represent 22 states and the District of Columbia.

Send an e-mail to Caroline Preston. 

Johns Hopkins tallied Mr. Bloomberg’s total giving in advance of an event Thursday to unveil a new children’s hospital center, to which the New York mayor contributed $120-million. Mr. Bloomberg’s first gift came in 1965; it was for $5.

He has given more to Johns Hopkins than to any other institution. Last year, Mr. Bloomberg, who made his fortune through a financial-data and media business, ranked fifth on The Chronicle’s list of generous donors.

Because many donors give anonymously, it’s impossible to say if Mr. Bloomberg’s giving makes him the biggest benefactor to a single university, but according to Chronicle figures, he would certainly be near the top.

The late John Kluge, a communications mogul, gave at least $400-million to his alma mater, Columbia University. The financier Sanford Weill and his wife, Joan, have given at least $400-million to Cornell University and to the Weill Cornell Medical College. Mr. Weill is a Cornell alumnus.

T. Boone Pickens, the oil man, has given more than $345-million to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, according to Chronicle tallies.

Mr. Bloomberg’s first naming-level gift to Hopkins, $1-million, came in 1984, in honor of his mother’s 75th birthday. Fundraisers are no doubt wondering what Mr. Bloomberg’s 50th reunion year, 2014, might bring.

Alexander Soros has started a fund to support social justice and human rights.

Alexander Soros, a son of the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, announced today that he is establishing his own foundation  to support organizations that promote social justice and human rights.

The Alexander Soros Foundation will focus on innovative organizations around the world. He would not disclose how much money he has put into the philanthropy.

“Philanthropy is not the answer to every problem, but it can be a catalyst for change,” said Alexander Soros, in a written statement announcing his fund’s creation. He started the foundation, he added, to finance “more experimental and perhaps controversial projects that larger mainstream foundations might not be able to take on.”

Alexander Soros, 26,  serves on the boards of Bend the Arc: a Jewish Partnership for Justice (formerly Jewish Funds for Justice) and Global Witness; both have received grants from the new foundation, with Bend the Arc receiving the first award, of $250,000.

He also serves on the board of his father’s Open Society Foundations, which supports social-justice and human-rights causes. Alexander Soros is pursuing a doctorate in modern European history at University of California at Berkeley.

The foundation has made some of its other first grants to the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Make the Road New York, which supports  social-justice projects to aid Latinos and working-class people.

The new Soros fund does not accept unsolicited proposals.

Dig deeper: Read about George Soros’s thoughts on establishing the next generation of his giving in this profile from The Chronicle’s archive.

Send an e-mail to Heather Joslyn.