Philanthropy Today - Philanthropy.com

These are items on other Web sites that are of interest to the nonprofit world. The Chronicle has no control over their content or availability. To reach the Philanthropy Today staff, send an e-mail message to daily.news@philanthropy.com

Compiled by Noelle Barton, Caroline Bermudez, Maria Di Mento, Audrey Hill, Anne W. Howard, and Candie Jones.

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February 2008

February 29, 2008

Bush Presidential Library Hasn't Decided Whether to Disclose Donor Names

President Bush said on Thursday that the nonprofit group raising money for his presidential library accepts money from foreign sources, but he has not decided whether to disclose the names of donors, reports The Dallas Morning News.

The library, to be housed at Southern Methodist University, is expected to cost about $250-million to build.

The issue of who supports presidential libraries, and whether their identities should be made public, has been controversial and is the subject of a debate pending in Congress.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who sponsored a bill passed by the House to require disclosure of donations to presidential library foundations, said he did so because “when you have foreign governments and foreign business people and corporations giving huge amounts of money when the president is sitting there able to do favors for them, we ought to have it disclosed.

The Senate has not yet passed a measure similar to Mr. Waxman’s.

Opinion: Oprah Winfrey's "Big Give" Promotes Troubling View of Philanthropy

Despite the charitable intentions of Oprah Winfrey’s much-anticipated reality show Oprah’s Big Give, several columnists across the country are skeptical about Ms. Winfrey’s latest venture.

Big Give, which premieres this Sunday on ABC features eight episodes in which 10 contestants compete to “change the lives of complete strangers in the most creative and dramatic ways” in different locations across the country.

Competitors are given a picture and a name of a stranger in need and then must decide, in teams of two, how to “make a real difference” for that person. At the end of each week, a panel of celebrity judges eliminates one group. A $1-million prize awaits the show’s winner.

Robert Bianco of USA Today says contestants would “be better served by advice from people with hands-on experience in raising money without the benefit of celebrity. “

Mr. Bianco says that the show’s reality format clearly “turns charity into a competitive sport” and lends little attention to the underlying issues that may be affecting those in need. “Give is a throwback to a time when the poor were expected to be grateful for whatever they were given,” he writes. “Seldom has the drive to do good works been as alarmingly, offensively presumptuous.”

A critic for the Mercury News, in San Jose, was more positive about the show. “You’ll find plenty of heartwarming stories and feel-good moments in Oprah’s Big Give, writes Chuck Barney.

Read The Chronicle’s article about the rise of reality television and see Oprah Winfrey’s ranking in the Philanthropy 50, our annual list of the donors who give the most to charity each year.)

Opinion: IRS Scrutiny of Sen. Obama's Church Is Problem for All Charities

The Internal Revenue Service’s investigation of Sen. Barack Obama’s appearance at the United Church of Christ raises concerns about freedom of speech for all nonprofit organizations, writes John K. Wilson on The Huffington Post.

“The danger is that when nonprofit groups are silenced, corporate America will be able to dominate even more thoroughly the public debate,” says Mr. Wilson, author of several books on politics and founder of the Institute for College Freedom.

If IRS rules were to be taken literally, Mr. Wilson says, a church or nonprofit group would be required to “give the same speaking opportunity to every single candidate for president.”

At the onset of this primary season, that would have meant nearly 50 speakers. Since “These groups cannot afford to provide an outlet for every nutcase candidate to speak, and they cannot risk the legal liability of failing to invite every possible speaker,” the rules effectively prohibit nonprofit groups from hosting politicians.

He fears that threats by the IRS to revoke tax-exempt status under such conditions will silence political speech, particularly at colleges and other nonprofit groups. The IRS must realize, Mr. Wilson says, that “fraudulent groups can be stopped without suppressing the political speech of legitimate churches and activist organizations.”

(Free registration is required to view the AP article on the Los Angeles Times site.)

Nonprofit Group Opens Global Seed Vault in Artic

The Global Seed Vault, a project run by the nonprofit group, Global Crop Diversity Trust, has begun to collect and store seeds from all over the world in a massive, high-security vault on a Norwegian Island near the North Pole, The New York Times reports.

The vault, built by Norway, and financed by government and private donations including $20-million from Britain, $12-million from Australia, $11-million from Germany and $6.5-million from the United States, will attempt to store and protect every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.

Although networks of seed banks exist across the world, this project is regarded as the first broad effort to gather and systematize information about plants and their genes. Many scientists and governments consider this increasingly valuable as climate change may potentially affect the world’s food supply.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

How metaphors can help call attention to a charity’s cause

New research on the ways the foreclosure crisis is hurting the poor

William Buckley’s legacy to fund raising

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

From The Chronicle: Donations to Sports Events

Giving to 30 of the biggest walkathons, marathons, and other such events grew 12 percent last year, according to a study whose highlights are reported by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

From The Chronicle: What Makes Fund Raisers Succeed

To gauge fund raisers’ success, charities are adopting ever-more sophisticated approaches to evaluating performance, but some veterans question whether they are measuring the right things, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

(A paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view this article.)

February 28, 2008

Foundations Turn Their Attention Toward the Foreclosure Crisis

Some of the country’s wealthiest foundations are developing plans to combat the growing foreclosure crisis, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Ford Foundation, in New York, plans to support programs focused on reducing the number of homes that end up in foreclosure, and Living Cities, a New York consortium of major foundations and financial institutions that work to revive inner cities, is also considering how to support programs that will enable borrowers to keep their homes and get abandoned properties back into use.

“Every big funder is out there trying to figure out how to participate in systemic responses,” said George McCarthy, a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation. Mr. McCarthy noted that “no one can figure out where the opportunity lies” and how a foundation’s money can be spent most effectively.

See The Chronicle’s article on how foundations and charities are devising ways to deal with the loan crisis.

(A paid subscription is required to view the Wall Street Journal article.)

Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Asks District Attorney to Investigate Loss of Funds

New York’s district attorney is investigating the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International over the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars, says The New York Times.

The organization asked the district attorney’s office to investigate after it conducted an internal audit and discovered the money was missing.

Gail Pressberg, the secretary of the foundation’s board, said the probe is centered on the misappropriation of funds through phony receipts that had been produced on computers.

Ms. Pressberg said her organization had fired two employees after its audit determined that a substantial sum was missing.

“It’s a foolish person who tries this” Ms. Pressberg said. “We catch people.”

“We had enough evidence to terminate the employees,” she added. “There’s no nonsense in this organization.”

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Controversial Museum Director Steps Down

The board of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in New York, announced on Wednesday that Thomas Krens, its controversial director, is stepping down, The New York Times reports.

The move comes three years after Mr. Krens won a battle with the foundation’s biggest benefactor, Peter B. Lewis, who resigned after arguing that Mr. Krens was spending too much money and should focus more of his time and attention on the foundation’s New York flagship museum rather than on funneling resources into developing Guggenheim satellites overseas.

In a statement yesterday, the foundation said that Mr. Krens would remain at the foundation as a senior adviser for international affairs, overseeing the creation of a 452,000-square-foot museum in Abu Dhabi, and would stay on as director until a successor was hired.

Over his nearly 20-year tenure, Mr. Krens has sometimes been accused of arrogance.

His supporters told the newspaper that Mr. Krens has lately been disappointed with the foundation’s board, especially its lack of big donors.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Two New York Medical Institutions Share $50-Million Gift

Ronald O. Perelman, chairman of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, the majority shareholder of Revlon cosmetics, announced today that he is donating $50-million to support heart care and reproductive-medicine research at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, reports the Associated Press.

The money will be used to establish the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Care Institute and will support research and clinical care at the newly named Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine.

Mr. Perelman serves on the hospital’s Board of Trustees and on the medical college’s Board of Overseers.

Ms. Cohen, a newspaper gossip columnist and television entertainment correspondent, was Mr. Perelman’s ex-wife. She died from ovarian cancer last year.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the Boston Globe site.)

From The Chronicle: Foundation Giving

The nation’s largest foundations increased their giving to $19.1-billion in 2006, rising 16.4 percent over the previous year, according to a Foundation Center study whose findings are highlighted in a Chronicle of Philanthropy report.

From The Chronicle: Endowment Gifts

A growing number of states are passing laws to make it easier for nonprofit groups to spend their endowment assets during difficult economic times. A report recommending ways to account for such endowment spending, however, could create special problems for colleges and other wealthy institutions, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

Is there too much hype about social entrepreneurs?

A donor’s defense of his gifts to the Clinton Foundation

How colleges are trying to avoid new regulations on endowment spending

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion: Is Direct Mail Dead?

Join our online discussion next week about the future of direct mail.

Taking your questions will be two experts on direct marketing — Roger Craver and Madeline Stanionis.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, March 4, at noon Eastern time and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

February 27, 2008

IRS Investigates Church Group for Obama Speech

The Internal Revenue Service is investigating the United Church of Christ for possibly violating federal restrictions on political activity for tax-exempt groups after the denomination hosted Sen. Barack Obama as a speaker at its national meeting last year, says the Associated Press.

Senator Obama, who gave a speech to the denomination about faith and public life in Hartford, Conn., after he became a candidate for president, belongs to the 1.2 million-member Protestant group through his Chicago congregation.

The IRS cited articles posted on the church’s Web site stating that volunteers for Senator Obama’s campaign gave out information at tables outside the center. Nonprofit groups are prohibited from endorsing candidates or providing support for campaigns, although groups are allowed to invite candidates to address them.

The Rev. J. Bennett Guess, a spokesman for the denomination, said the group had taken careful steps to avoid any wrongdoing. Church leaders consulted with lawyers before the event. He said a church official announced at the event that the senator’s talk was not a campaign-related event, that Senator Obama’s volunteers were told they could not enter the meeting, and that the denomination had invited Senator Obama to speak a year before he announced his candidacy.

Rev. John H. Thomas, president of the denomination, expressed dismay and disappointment over the investigation. “When the invitation to an elected public official to speak to the national meeting of his own church family is called into question, it has a chilling effect on every religious community,” he said in a statement.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the Los Angeles Times site.)

Catholic Dioceses Ask Members Not to Support a Breast-Cancer Charity

Several Catholic dioceses are joining together to discourage their members from supporting the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, a charity that fights breast cancer, the Associated Press reports.

The groups, which include dioceses in Charleston, Little Rock, and Phoenix, have taken issue with the foundation’s support for the organization Planned Parenthood. The Komen charity provides Planned Parenthood with money to finance breast exams and to offer education to women in its clinics.

A diocese statement, however, says that donors “cannot control how an organization designates its funds” and that such support “directly frees up funds to support other areas of an organization’s agenda.” Marianne Linane, director of the diocese’s “respect life” office, said those other agendas include abortions and contraceptive services, which the church opposes.

Rebecca Gibson, a spokeswoman for the Komen foundation, said that Planned Parenthood received less than 1 percent of the $69.6-million the foundation awarded for education and screening programs during 2007.

“I think it’s just really unfortunate undue attention is being shed on organizations that are providing vital services in those communities,” Ms. Gibson said.

Federal Officials Criticize Humane Society Role in Beef Recall

The Humane Society was criticized by federal officials at a Congressional hearing for delaying the release of an undercover video that touched off the biggest beef recall in history, reports The New York Times.

The group was responsible for the release of a video of what appears to be sick or lame cattle being forced to their feet with forklifts, hoses, and electric prods at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in Chino, Calif., in October and November, a method that poses a slight risk of introducing disease into the food supply.

The video was not released publicly by the Humane Society until late January, however. “Why wait until February to release the video?” Rep. Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas, pressed a Humane Society representative.

Ed Schafer, the secretary of agriculture, voiced similar disappointment last week when he stated that “for four months, theoretically, animals were not being properly treated, and the Humane Society stood by and allowed it to happen.”

Humane Society representatives defended their position on Tuesday, explaining that they had immediately taken the tape to local prosecutors in California and released it publicly after becoming frustrated with the slow pace of the prosecutor’s investigation.

Paul Shapiro, who oversees issues involving farm-animal abuse for the Humane Society, said the criticism of the Humane Society was misdirected. “First and foremost, the USDA should not be relying on a private animal-welfare charity to do its job for them,” he said.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Hedge-Fund Manager Donates $60-Million to a University in N.Y.

James H. Simons, a hedge-fund manager, is giving Stony Brook University, in New York, a $60-million gift to be used for a center on geometry and physics, The New York Times reports.

Mr. Simons, a former math professor, served as chairman of the university’s mathematics department from 1968 to 1976 before he founded an investment-management firm, Renaissance Technologies.

Mr. Simons, and his wife, Marilyn, had previously donated nearly $40-million to the university.

See The Chronicle’s report on giving by hedge-fund managers.

(Free registration is required to view the Times article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)

Mass. Nonprofit Groups Lose $8-Million Estate Battle

After a legal battle lasting more than five years, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has rejected a final effort by four charities to overturn the will of a potential benefactor, The Boston Globe reports.

Leonard R. Brener, a former Boston police lieutenant and later a wealthy stockbroker, had intended to bequeath his $8-million estate to four local charities until five weeks before his death from cancer at age 85.

Mr. Brener, who had no heirs, suddenly changed his will to give the full amount to his niece and her husband, Lois and Herbert Rosen, who had cared for him in his final days.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, the Maimonides School in Brookline, and the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown — the previously stated beneficiaries — tried to have the will overturned and told the court that Mr. Brener had not been mentally competent when he decided to leave his estate to the Rosens.

The nonprofit groups have not yet said whether they will request further appellate review by the Supreme Judicial Court.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Attack on Charity in Pakistan Spreads Fear of Further Violence

The offices of a British aid agency, Plan International, in Pakistan were stormed Monday by unidentified gunmen who killed three employees and injured several more, The Guardian reports.

While the motives for the attack are unclear, other foreign organizations operating in and around Mansehra, which is 45 miles north of Islamabad, fear that the event may spark increased violence against other nonprofit groups. The town has been a center for foreign-aid activity since a 2005 earthquake killed at least 73,000 in the area.

“Nobody knows whether it’s the start of a campaign targeting international NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] or just sheer bad luck,” said Dorothy Blane, country director of Pakistan for Concern. “Until now Mansehra has been seen as a safe haven. Movement was restricted during things like the cartoon protests, but nobody saw it as a dangerous spot. This has changed everything.”

Tom Miller, Plan’s chief executive, said he was closing operations across Pakistan.

Kidnapped Aid Worker May Be Dead, Groups Say

Several foreign groups say they believe that the American woman aid worker and her local driver who were abducted by unidentified gunmen in Afghanistan last month may have been killed.

Reuters reports that no group, including Taliban insurgents, has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of Cyd Mizell, 49, an employee of the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, and her driver, who were headed for work in a car in the southern city of Kandahar at the time.

“Although we have no confirmation of their deaths, we have received information over the past few days indicating that our two aid workers have been killed,” the charity said on its Web site.

An official working for a Western security group spoke anonymously to Reuters on Wednesday and confirmed, “Yes, we have this fear that they may have been killed” but said there were still no further details.

Online Discussion: Is Direct Mail Dead?

Join our online discussion next week about the future of direct mail.

Taking your questions will be two experts on direct marketing — Roger Craver and Madeline Stanionis.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, March 4, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: New Orleans Rebuilding

Leonard Riggio, chairman of the Barnes & Noble bookselling company, and his wife, Louise, have made a $20-million gift to build homes for low-income homeowners in New Orleans who have been unable to repair or rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. The donation is one of the largest to date for rebuilding on the Gulf Coast, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

Get Ahead: Deadlines for Grants and Awards

You can now get an early look at the deadlines for grants and awards compiled by The Chronicle. We have posted on our Web site all the application deadlines that will appear in our March 6 issue.

You will also find an updated list of conferences and workshops designed for nonprofit executives.

February 26, 2008

California Creates Cabinet Post to Promote Volunteerism

California is creating a cabinet-level post to oversee programs for volunteers, reports The New York Times.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to expand and elevate the role of the executive director of California Volunteers, the state’s commission for volunteerism. As a cabinet secretary, the volunteerism leader will be involved in planning the state’s response to natural disasters and coordinating volunteer efforts to provide relief.

State leaders also hope that giving a higher profile to volunteer roles will lead corporations and individuals to increase their support for programs that rely on volunteers. They said that is especially important given the state’s tight economy.

See The Chronicle’s article on the state budget woes affecting charities in California and beyond.

(Free registration is required to view the Times article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)

Wal-Mart's Giving in America Grows by 8%

Wal-Mart Stores increased its charitable giving in the United States by 8 percent last year, reports the Associated Press.

The company said it donated $296.2-million last year. That followed a year in which Wal-Mart increased donations by 10 percent.

Wal-Mart said donations overseas grew sharply — rising by 50 percent, to $41-million.

The company has said that its profits rose last year by 12 percent.

Wal-Mart gave more cash donations in 2005 and 2006 than any other large company that provided data in The Chronicle’s annual survey of corporate donations.

(Free registration is required to view the AP article on the Forbes site, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)

Bay Area Group Prods Architects to Donate Services

Public Architecture, a San Francisco nonprofit organization, seeks to create an industrywide standard of pro-bono work in architecture, much like in the legal profession, reports The San Francisco Chronicle.

Founded five years ago by John Peterson, an architect, one of the group’s major programs is the 1% Solution, which encourages architecture firms to donate 1 percent of their billable hours to public service. Thus far, 290 firms in 35 states have pledged to take part in this program.

For the 1% Solution program, Public Architecture has created a database of nonprofit organizations with specific design needs.

And the organization lets architecture firms know that doing pro-bono work can also be good for their bottom lines, by creating new design markets, for instance. “We need to make the case to nonprofits that good design thinking can advance their cause, and to architects that creative, aggressive pro-bono work can be healthy for their business,” says Mr. Peterson.

Read The Chronicle’s special report on charities and design.

Health-Care Costs Stress Churches

Churches are caught in a major financial bind as health-care costs escalate, reports Religion News Service.

Church memberships are declining — making finances tight — and the proportion of older clergy members is growing, so the cost of insurance for them is rising fast, the article says. What’s more, research shows that Protestant ministers tend to be more overweight, stressed, and depressed than the general population, adding to the overall increase in health costs borne by churches.

In response, some churches have made changes to their health-care plans and are encouraging pastors to get health-risk assessments and are offering incentives for taking steps to improve their health.

See The Chronicle’s article on the efforts under way by grant makers and others to help clergy members deal with physical and emotional stress.

(Free registration is required to view the Religion News Service article on the Washington Post site.)

Rural Hospitals See Shortage of Surgeons

A crisis looms, say experts, as a national shortage of surgeons and doctors — particularly in rural areas — threatens patients’ access to health care, reports USA Today.

The lack of new physicians, coupled with the aging baby-boomer population — and the impending retirement of many doctors in that generation — has created the current shortage, says Josef Fischer, chairman of surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston.

Read The Chronicle’s article on grant makers’ response to America’s shortage of nurses.

From The Chronicle: Job Hunting in Tough Times

Read a transcript from The Chronicle’s online discussion today about seeking nonprofit jobs in a tight economy.

February 25, 2008

Charity Sues Hospital for Failing to Honor Donor's Request

Children’s Friend & Service, an antipoverty group in Providence, R.I., is suing Rhode Island Hospital to force it to honor the bequest of a woman who donated $4,000 to the hospital in her will two months before she died in 1912, reports The Boston Globe.

Louisa G. Lippitt said in her will that she wanted the money to be used to create a permanent bed for a poor person in need of health care.

An administrative assistant at the poverty group found documents about the gift while searching through archives for the charity’s forthcoming 175th anniversary.

Charity officials say they believe that the hospital received the donation but never provided a free bed as requested by Ms. Lippitt, who said in her will that she wanted to give Children’s Friend Society of Providence, the current charity’s predecessor, the right to refer patients to the hospital.

After finding the certificate, Children’s Friend talked to the hospital about setting aside a bed for its needy clients. When the two sides could not come to an agreement, Children’s Friend sued the hospital.

Lawyers for the hospital have asked that the lawsuit be dismissed on the grounds that the gift was originally made to Children’s Friend Society and that the current organization was not established until 1949.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Increased Scrutiny of Islamic Charities Draws Criticism

As counterterrorism officials in the United States and the Middle East investigate Islamic charities, critics have charged that the government is overextending its reach, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Government officials say Islamic fund raisers have stayed a step ahead of the authorities by taking donor files and moving among different groups. But over the past six years there has been little evidence to directly connect charities to individual acts of terrorism, the newspaper notes. Questions about the government’s approach grew in response to high-profile trials in which prosecutors failed to prove the connection between charities and terrorists or terrorist groups.

Government officials acknowledge that action against the organizations has incited anger and opposition among many American Muslims and some civil-liberties advocates, creating what counterterrorism officials consider a public-relations problem. Among the charges leveled at federal officials: that they have kept evidence of terrorist connections secret and used nonterrorism charges, such as tax and money-laundering violations, to put some charities out of business.

(A paid subscription is required to view this article.)

Nonprofit Groups Embrace For-Profit Enterprise

Some nonprofit groups are transforming themselves into businesses to be able to expand their reach, reports The New York Times.

The newspaper focuses on the effort started by Miles Gilburne, a former America Online executive, and his wife, Nina Zolt, a former lawyer, who put $10-million into the charity In2Books, an Internet program that was founded to help students use books and online tools to enhance their education.

To support and expand its original mission, in 2006 it acquired ePals, a for-profit company in Herndon, Va., that started as a Web-based electronic pen-pal service, transforming the once-struggling venture into a promising for-profit enterprise that has attracted generous support from investors and partners including National Geographic and Intel, which plans to begin shipping its Classmate laptops, designed for students in developing countries, with the ePals icon on the screens.

As social entrepreneurs continue to influence the landscape of traditional philanthropy, many nonprofit groups are seeking ways to generate revenue and become more self-sustaining. “This needs to be a large business to have a really significant social impact,” Mr. Gilburne said. “We couldn’t do what we’re doing as a nonprofit.”

See The Chronicle’s special report on creative approaches successful groups are taking to spread their reach.

(Free registration is required to view the New York Times article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)

Newspaper Official Urges More Coverage of Charity Issues

The controversy over spending by veterans charities demonstrates that newspapers need to look deeper at the issues of how nonprofit groups raise and distribute money, as well as how nonprofit watchdog groups evaluate organizations, says a column by Deborah Howell, the ombudsman of The Washington Post.

What’s more, they need to pay attention to the “huge role” that nonprofit groups play “in helping (and sometimes not) people and influencing public policy,” she wrote. Ms. Howell plays an independent role at the newspaper; she comments on the newspaper’s reporting, accuracy, and fairness.

Ms. Howell offered that view after looking into complaints from Paralyzed Veterans of America, which received a grade of F in a chart published in the Post to accompany an article about a report by the American Institute of Philanthropy.

The newspaper acknowledged that it was unfair to name the veterans organization in the chart without sufficient detail on how the grades were arrived at and without any comments from the group in the accompanying article.

Read The Chronicle’s most recent article on Congress’s inquiry into the fund-raising controversy.

(Free registration is required to view the Washington Post article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings: the lessons that Sen. John McCain’s fund raising offers to nonprofit groups dealing with controversy.

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion Next Week: Nonprofit Careers

Join our online discussion tomorrow on how to search for nonprofit jobs at a time when many organizations are facing or anticipating shrinking revenue.

Nurys Harrigan, president of Careers in Nonprofits, a Chicago executive-search company, will be available to answer your career-related questions.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, February 26, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: Big Gift for Gay-Rights Groups

Richard Weiland, one of Microsoft’s earliest employees, has bequeathed most of his $158-million fortune to charity, including making one of the biggest gifts ever received by a gay-rights group, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

February 22, 2008

Heir to Italian Fortune Sponsors Landmark Concert in North Korea

Spurred by the belief in the power of music to unite people of different backgrounds, the Japanese-born countess, Lady Yoko Nagae Ceschina, is sponsoring the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance next week in North Korea, reports The Wall Street Journal.

When North Korea extended an invitation to the Philharmonic orchestra last year, Mrs. Ceschina was the first person to offer to provide financial support, according to Zarin Mehta, the Philharmonic’s president.

Mrs. Ceschina, 75, inherited her title and her $190-million fortune from her late husband, Count Renzo Ceschina, and will provide money to house, feed, and move the 280 musicians, staff members, and others, though she declined to disclose the cost.

Although the orchestra has a three-year sponsorship deal with Credit Suisse, which is sponsoring the group’s five-city tour of Asia, which began February 11, the company declined to pay for the trip to North Korea.

Some human-rights advocates say the Philharmonic’s concert will be used as propaganda by the North Korean government, but Mrs. Ceschina said that she was unconcerned about possible political controversy surrounding the event. “I always support them without thinking about political issues,” she said of the orchestra.

Texas University Officials Accused of Misusing Donations

Two University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center administrators have spent tens of thousands of dollars of donated money on seemingly extravagant items, reports CBS 11 News, in Dallas.

Kern Wildenthal, president of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas, and Cynthia Bassel, the university’s executive vice president for external relations, who are paid $1,166,582 and $344,600 respectively, made questionable purchases, the television station said, which it discovered by combing through the institution’s financial records. The station received the records through the state’s Public Information Act.

Mr. Wildenthal declined to discuss the expenses with the television station, but a spokesman for the university said the spending by both officials was “totally legal, ethical, and appropriate.”

The television station points to several credit-card expenses billed by Dr. Wildenthal and Ms. Bassel to the Southwestern Medical Foundation, the university’s fund-raising arm. Those include $160,000 worth of luxury wines, $30,000 for mail-order gifts to donors from the Velvet Crème Popcorn Company, in Kansas, as well as trips to England, France, Italy, and Switzerland made by Dr. Wildenthal to conduct business for the Wendy and Emery Reves Foundation.

Corporate Foundation Will Encourage People to Train for Science Careers

A corporate foundation in California is starting a new effort to improve understanding of the life sciences and to encourage young people to train for careers in the sciences, reports The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Invitrogen company, which makes tools used by biotechnology companies and drug researchers, is pledging $1-million to its philanthropic arm, the Invitrogen Foundation.

Google and Nonprofit Hospital Seek New Approach to Online Health Records

Google has formed a pilot program with the nonprofit academic medical center Cleveland Clinic to help patients gain more control over their online medical data, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Under the pilot program, Google officials say that patients in the Cleveland Clinic system will be able to gain access to their medical records at any time through a Google online health profile and can securely share medical information as needed.

(A paid subscription is required to view this article.)

Bill Gates Urges Young People to Aid the World's Poor

In a recent speech at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Bill Gates urged students to explore careers in math and science and to be mindful of what they can do with their expertise to help the world’s poor, reports The Montreal Gazette.

Mr. Gates told the crowd that he did not have a real understanding of poverty as a young man and hoped that the students developing technological skills would be mindful of the role they can play in alleviating global suffering.

Mr. Gates’s lecture, part of a five-campus tour of North American universities, follows an announcement by Microsoft this week that the company will give away versions of its commercial development and design software to more than 35 million students. Microsoft hopes the project, called the DreamSpark program, will help fill a growing global demand for developers, scientists, and mathematicians.

Opinion: California Bill on Foundation Diversity Misses the Point

A bill passed by the California Assembly to require foundations with assets of more than $250-million to publish information on the race, ethnicity, and gender of their officials and grant recipients is misguided, write the editors of the San Jose Mercury News.

They say the real issue up for debate ought to be, “Are foundation grants effective?”

While the editors acknowledge that “there is a belief among many in the nonprofit community that large foundations in California don’t give out enough money to organizations that serve, or are managed by, minorities,” they say the bill, AB 624, is a “crude yardstick” for dealing with issues of diversity and foundation work.

The main problem with the bill is that “what constitutes ‘serving minorities’ defies facile formulas.”

Although “foundations must be transparent about who gets their dollars,” they write, “they shouldn’t be required to spend their money and their recipients’ time collecting demographic and personal information, based on dubious assumptions.”

(Read an opinion piece in The Chronicle about this measure.)

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

Are nonprofit groups prolonging the suffering in Uganda and elsewhere?

How the Humane Society of the United States uses its Web site to capitalize on its victory in shutting down a beef slaughterhouse.

The Chronicle now offers a way for you to use Twitter to stay up-to-date on Give and Take and other features.

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion: Job Seeking in a Tight Market

Join our online discussion next week on how to search for nonprofit jobs at a time when many organizations are facing or anticipating shrinking revenue.

Nurys Harrigan, president of Careers in Nonprofits, a Chicago executive-search company, will be available to answer your career-related questions.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, February 26, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: Government Budget Cuts

Shrinking state revenue could mean losses for many nonprofit groups, reports The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

February 21, 2008

Nonprofit Groups Find Insurers Unwilling to Refinance Bonds

Nonprofit groups trying to refinance bonds to avoid extra costs have run into unexpected obstacles from insurance agencies, reports The Boston Globe.

Normally, bonds issued by universities, hospitals, and other large charities are safe bets for investors, and the groups were actually paying insurance companies to make the bonds more attractive to investors, including putting those bonds up for auction. But the recent meltdown in the real-estate market hurt many insurance agencies that held subprime-mortgage investments in their portfolios. As a result, investors have avoided their bonds, including those being auctioned for nonprofit groups.

When no one buys the bonds, the groups are under contractual obligations to pay interest rates of up to 20 percent, far higher than any payout they would have received. In addition, when the groups have tried to refinance to save costs, the insurance companies have refused to let them convert to bonds with more manageable interest rates.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Israeli Museum Opens Exhibit of Art Looted by Nazis

The Israel Museum, in Jerusalem, is exhibiting art that Nazis in Germany, including Adolph Hitler himself, stole from French Jews during World War II, reports The New York Times.

France possesses 2,000 pieces of art that Germany returned after the war but that were never claimed by their original owners, probably because they were murdered in the Holocaust. Among them are important works by Cezanne, Degas, and Manet. Fifty-three of the works are now on display in Jerusalem, along with a smaller number of works held by Israel that also have no owners.

To stage the exhibit, which is a joint effort between Israel and France, the Israel parliament first had to pass a law that revoked the rights of Israelis to claim stolen artwork while the work was temporarily displayed in the country. The 2007 law allows Israelis to make such claims of ownership only in the exhibit’s country of origin.

The article also includes a slideshow of the works.

(Free registration is required to view the article and the slideshow.)

Business Partnerships Can Be Perilous for Charities

Nonprofit groups and businesses have different goals and cultures, so it’s crucial for charities to carefully think through any partnerships with businesses and clearly establish ownership rights before taking any action, reports The Financial Times.

The article gives a few examples of partnerships turned ugly, including the One Laptop Per Child program, which aimed to supply cheap computers to children in poor countries. Intel, the company helping to produce the laptops, pulled out and started its own venture, which angered the founder of the One Laptop effort.

Other partnerships have been mutually beneficial, though, including a program to spread cellphones in Africa that turned out to be quite profitable for the corporation involved, Vodafone. The article suggests that such partnerships succeeded because both sides clearly laid out their goals and because they sorted through intellectual-property issues beforehand to avoid entanglements later.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Online Discussion: Job Searching in a Tight Market

Join our online discussion next week on how to search for nonprofit jobs at a time when many organizations are facing or anticipating shrinking revenue.

Nurys Harrigan, president of Careers in Nonprofits, a Chicago executive-search company, will be available to answer your career-related questions.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, February 26, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: Online-Contest Winners

An Oklahoma charity that aids orphaned Chinese children, a small animal-rescue group in New Jersey, and an organization that fights epilepsy are among the top winners of a pair of online fund-raising contests designed to demonstrate the power of large numbers of small donations, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

From The Chronicle: Giving and Volunteering

A growing number of Americans say they are volunteering, according to a study by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. Seventy-four percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed said they participated in some form of volunteer service in 2007, a 10-percent increase over the previous year.

February 20, 2008

Salvation Army Campaign Results Show Signs of Nonprofit Stress

The Salvation Army announced Tuesday that its Red Kettle campaign during the 2007 Christmas season achieved only a 0.7 percent annual gain — the smallest since 2002 — a sign that even well-established charities may be in a financial pinch this year.

The organization has increased Red Kettle donations in the range of 4.6 percent to 9.1 percent during the past four holiday seasons, which traditionally start the day after Thanksgiving and end on Christmas Eve.

Reuters reports that a decrease in charitable donations to causes such as the Salvation Army may be due not only to tight economic conditions but also to the proliferation of “trendy causes.”

Sandra Miniutti, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator, explained that although consumer spending does respond to economic conditions, groups like the Salvation Army are also locked in a tight competition for donations from many other nonprofit groups. For example, she said, “Right now, giving to environmental groups is really hot and trendy, and it is really at the forefront of folks’ minds,” rather than causes centered on food or the homeless.

Union Accuses Hospital of Overstating Charity Care

The Service Employees International union — which has 1.9 million members — thinks that nonprofit groups such as hospitals should comply with the standards of the federal 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that govern private companies, reports The New York Times.

The union stated its position in a letter to directors of a Boston hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who also sit on the boards of for-profit companies. Although the union acknowledged in the letter that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not apply to nonprofit groups, it said that under Massachusetts law, directors of nonprofit institutions who also work for corporations must “use the specialized knowledge they have from their position in the for-profit world” in governing the nonprofit group.

In particular, the union argued that the hospital violated those governing standards by including its losses from bad debts in its tally of the charity care it provides. It suggested that the hospital restate the value it placed on the charitable care it provided in 2005 and 2006, which the union estimated would drop the value of the hospital’s charity care by 16 percent in 2005 alone.

While the Internal Revenue Service made clear in December that it did not consider bad debt a part of charity care, the agency’s new treatment of bad debt is not retroactive.

Judy Glasser, a spokeswoman for Beth Israel Deaconess, said the hospital had not violated any laws. “We follow all the reporting requirements of the uncompensated-care rules,” Ms. Glasser said, “and we’ve never been given any indication by any of the regulatory agencies we report to that anything is not according to the regulations.”

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Soros, Omidyar, and Google Collaborate to Finance Enterprises in India

The Soros Economic Development Fund, the Omidyar Network, and Google.org have announced that they are teaming up in a $17-million venture to finance small and medium-size enterprises in India, reports Reuters.

Said Neal DeLaurentis, vice president of the Soros Economic Development Fund: “Long ignored by commercial capital markets, small and medium businesses are an attractive investment opportunity, as well as an engine for economic growth.”

The Associated Press reports that the venture, Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company, would fill the gap between loans offered by microfinance institutions and those of large commercial banks and private-equity funds.

The company’s investment adviser will be located at the Indian School of Business in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

(Free registration is required to view the AP article on the Washington Post site.)

Orchestra to Lure Listeners Through Personalized Packages

The Philadelphia Orchestra is luring audiences through an innovative new tactic for its 2008-9 season — it is tailoring concerts and events to the needs and experiences of different audiences. Peter Dobrin, a music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer writes that while many challenges remain for the orchestra in the coming year, it is a fundamentally sound strategy.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has already made adjustments to the changing market realities through the use of live video screens, guest speakers and discussions, social events for singles, and even talks and postlude concerts to reward audiences for their loyalty. But for the forthcoming season, Mr. Dobrin writes, “for the first time these experiments have been organized into packages with a lot of forethought about who the customer is and what her level of musical education might be.”

After hiring nonprofit consultants WolfBrown, the orchestra committed to crafting “collections,” or series of concerts and events aimed at constituencies with distinct tastes and levels of expertise. The orchestra hopes that not only will the strategy hook long-term listeners through packages, which include concert projection screens, parties, or on-stage discussions, but also that young and first-time listeners will be persuaded to become regular customers.

While it may be “easy to criticize the glacial pace of change,” Mr. Dobrin writes, the most crucial aspect of the new strategy may simply be that “the orchestra is now saying that you can experience it any way you want.”

Government and Politics Watch

Among the highlights from The Chronicle’s Government and Politics Watch:

Christian charities resist changes to President Bush’s AIDS program.

A headline-grabbing tax scandal in Germany is raising questions about how European countries regulate foundations.

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

Creative architectural designs for the homeless.

A defense of products marketed for charity.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his next role: U.S. president or full-time philanthropist?

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

From The Chronicle: College Donations Set New High in 2007

Backed by a strong economy and a growing stock market, American colleges and universities raised an estimated $29.8-billion in the 2007 fiscal year, the highest total ever recorded, according to a report released today by the Council for Aid to Education, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. But the country’s recent economic troubles have some fund-raising experts concerned that the high times might be coming to an end.

February 19, 2008

United Nations Health Official Criticizes Gates Foundation

An official at the World Health Organization says he fears the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has taken on undue influence on malaria research, reports The New York Times.

In a memo to the World Health Organization’s director general, Arata Kochi, chief of malaria for the group, expressed his concerns that the foundation’s domination over malaria research could eliminate the World Health Organization’s role in policy making and decrease the quality of scientific peer reviews. The World Health Organization is an arm of the United Nations.

Dr. Kochi wrote that the foundation’s money caused a number of the world’s leading malaria scientists to be “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group.” He also expressed his worry that the Gates foundation tries to guide World Health recommendations by pushing its favored research.

Amir Attaran, a health-policy expert at the University of Ottawa, agreed with Dr. Kochi’s assessment of the foundation and said it caused scientists to engage in “stomach-churning group think.” Dr. Attaran said he believed that scientists were intimidated by the foundation’s malaria chief, Regina Rabinovich, whom he described as “autocratic.”

Tadataka Yamada, executive director of global health at the Gates foundation, defended the grant makers, saying, “We encourage a lot of external review.”

Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said Dr. Kochi’s memo was “the view of one department, not the WHO’s view.” She said that the agency had good relations with the Gates foundation.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

N.C. Lawmaker Accused of Using Charity for Political Campaign

State auditors charge that Mary McAllister, a North Carolina legislator, used her nonprofit organization, Operation Sickle Cell, in Fayetteville, to campaign for her re-election, reports The Fayetteville Observer.

A state audit found that the charity’s computers were used for political activity, citing letters Ms. McAllister sent to voters and scripts for campaign television advertisements. Ms. McAllister, who represents North Carolina’s Cumberland County in its legislature, is executive director of the nonprofit organization.

State auditors said they recommended to the Internal Revenue Service that it investigate whether the organization was illegally involved in political activity.

The charity denies that it did anything wrong, as does Ms. McAllister. In a statement she called the audit a “prolonged political witch hunt.” She added: “The state auditor abused its discretion in the manner in which it handled the review of grants made to Operation Sickle Cell.”

Princeton Offers Incoming Students Chance to Do a Year of Community Service Overseas

Princeton University has announced plans to create a program that sends at least 10 percent of its incoming freshmen to complete a year of social-service work in a foreign country, reports The New York Times.

The university will not charge tuition for the year and will offer financial assistance to needy students.

In a press release, the university said students could work with existing nonprofit groups during their year abroad.

(Free registration is required to view the New York Times article.)

Opinion: Public Television No Longer Relevant

The Public Television Service has failed to keep up with the times, making it hard to get upset about the Bush administration’s efforts to make cutbacks in federal subsidies for the television system, writes Charles McGrath in a front-page article in the Sunday “Arts and Leisure” section of The New York Times.

Public television, he says, “more and more resembles everything else on TV.” He adds: “Since corporate sponsors were allowed to extend their “credit” announcements to 30 seconds, commercials in all but name have been a regular feature on public television, and that’s not to mention pledge programs, the fund-raising equivalent of waterboarding.”

Public radio, by contrast, he says, has done much better in making changes to keep relevant. “By not trolling after ratings, it has managed to stay distinctive,” he says.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

From The Chronicle: Dealing With Tough Economic Times

Read a transcript of today’s conversation with two experts on how charities can best deal with challenging times.

February 15, 2008

Charity Art Auction For AIDS Raises More Than $42-Million

A Valentine’s Day charity art auction held at Sotheby’s in New York on Thursday raised $42.6-million toward the fight against AIDS in Africa, Reuters reports.

The auction, which sold 82 contemporary works in total, was led by the rock star Bono’s Product (Red) campaign in collaboration with the British artist Damien Hirst.

Sotheby’s officials believe the event was one of the top charity events in history.

Proceeds from the auction were earmarked for the United Nations Global Fund’s fight against AIDS in Africa, which Product (Red) supports.

(Free registration is required to view this article on The Washington Post site.)

Securities Market Crunch Hits Nonprofit Groups

Some prominent nonprofit groups are facing higher interest rates on loans because of Wall Street’s credit crisis, reports The New York Times.

At issue are so-called auction-rate securities, which usually have low interest rates. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now paying 15 percent on auction securities, the newspaper says. Universities such as Georgetown and cultural institutions such as the de Young Museum in San Francisco have also taken major financial hits in the past few days.

G. David MacEwen, chief investment officer for fixed income at American Century Investment, explained, “What is going on here is a credit crunch. And the cost of the credit and the availability of credit even for good borrowers has clearly taken a big hit.”

While it is unclear how long such high interest rates will persist, some experts say they expect things to settle down soon. Cathryn P. Steeves, portfolio manager at Nuveen Investments, says, “At the end of the day, people will still be willing to buy paper from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at very favorable tax-exempt rates.”

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Broker Couple Accused of Stealing From Elderly Client and Her Foundation

A couple who worked as brokers for Morgan Stanley in New Jersey have been barred from working in the state’s securities industry and must pay civil fines after they were accused of stealing $393,595 from a client and her charitable foundation, reports The Wall Street Journal.

John and Kathleen Mullins, who worked for Morgan Stanley from June 2002 to August 2006 before being terminated, were charged by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority with defrauding the philanthropist Esther C. Weil, a 97-year-old nursing-home patient, and her foundation for their personal use. Vincent J. Oliva, the securities bureau chief, signed an order stating that the couple misappropriated client money from Morgan Stanley accounts that they oversaw to pay for their personal expenses without their client’s knowledge.

Susan Merrill, Finra’s enforcement chief, said, “Seniors are among the most vulnerable to financial wrongdoing. In this instance, an unprincipled broker took advantage of a trusting, elderly customer and her charitable foundation at a time when she was hospitalized and her health was failing. We will seek the strongest possible sanctions for this reprehensible, deceitful conduct.”

The amounts of the fines will be determined at a hearing.

Kathleen Mullins, reached at the couple’s home, said they had no immediate comment.

(A paid subscription is required to view this article.)

Company Plans to Donate Settlement Money to Charity

Hewlett-Packard, the information-technology corporation, settled cases this week with The New York Times Company and three BusinessWeek journalists after being caught spying on reporters in 2006 in an attempt to find the source of press leaks, reports PC World.

Terry Gross, the lawyer representing The Times company and the BusinessWeek reporters said that The New York Times plans to donate its settlement money to charity.

Neither party has disclosed the size of the settlements, but HP has already paid $4.5-million in a civil-case settlement with the State of California related to the incident.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the Washington Post site.)

Bill Gates Donates Millions in Stock to His Foundation

Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp., donated $695-million worth of his shares in the company to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in November, which then sold the stock, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.

Mr. Gates, who co-chairs the Gates foundation with his wife, Melinda, said Thursday that he held 8.9 percent of Microsoft, or 833.1 million shares, at the end of last year. According to a regulatory filing, his current stake in the company is worth $23.7-billion.

The stock shares are most likely part of the approximately $1.2-billion in 2007 the Gateses told The Chronicle they had paid to their foundation last year. The donation was the most recent payment toward the approximately $3.3-billion that Mr. and Ms. Gates pledged to the foundation in 2004.

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Lawmaker Raises Questions About $20-Million Saudi Gift to Georgetown U.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, sent a letter to Georgetown University’s president, John J. DeGioia, on Thursday asking for details on a $20-million donation from a Saudi prince for an academic center on Muslim and Christian relations, reports The Washington Post.

The university received the gift, the second largest in its history, in December 2005 from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a businessman and global investor, to expand its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which now carries the prince’s name. The center was founded in 1993 to build connections between the Muslim world and the West and improve understanding between Muslims and Christians.

In his letter to Georgetown, Mr. Wolf raised concerns about the Saudi government financing activities that may have supported Islamic militants and extremists.

“It is also important to know if the center has examined Saudi links to extremism and terrorism, including the relationship between Saudi public education and the Kingdom-supported clerical establishment, on the one hand, and the rise of anti-American attitudes, extremism, and violence in the Muslim world, on the other,” the letter says.

Julie Green Bataille, a spokeswoman for Georgetown, issued a statement saying that university officials would respond to Representative Wolf. The university also released a statement saying that the gift is being used “to advance the study of Islamic civilization and Muslim-Christian understanding, and intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and educational programs in these fields.”

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

What steps do community foundations need to take to adapt to change?

Is Bill Gates too focused on a technological solution to poverty?

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

From The Chronicle: $1-Billion Pledge

The financial titan Peter G. Peterson has announced a $1-billion pledge to start his own foundation. The philanthropy will seek ways to call attention to threats to America’s economic security, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

From The Chronicle: Postal Rates to Rise for Charities

Charities face an increase in postal rates in May, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

From The Chronicle: Defending a Gift

The author Patricia Cornwell has taken out full-page ads in newspapers to defend her $1-million donation to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

February 14, 2008

British University Seeks to Raise Nearly $2-Billion

Cambridge University, in England, has raised about $1.3-billion dollars toward its nearly $2-billion (£1-billion) capital campaign, but an economic downturn could hurt fund-raising efforts, reports Business Weekly.

The capital campaign coincides with the university’s 800th anniversary in 2009. The money raised will support students, staff members, research, and the university’s collections and architectural heritage, reports the news magazine.

“I am delighted to report another record year for the campaign. But we are not complacent,” says Alison Richard, the university’s vice chancellor who previously worked at Harvard. “There is still a long way to go, and we face more challenging economic times ahead.”

Campaign supporters include the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Hauser-Raspe Foundation, the Li Ka Shing Foundation, the Kavli Foundation, and the government of India.

Activist Group Criticizes Los Angeles Art Collection

A feminist activist group, the Guerrilla Girls, has sent an open letter to Eli Broad, the philanthropist, complaining that there are too few female and minority artists represented in the exhibition at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and in Mr. Broad’s private foundation’s art collection, reports The New York Times.

“How can this exhibition be a legitimate survey of contemporary art with so few women and artists of color? Especially in Los Angeles! And at a public museum like Lacma!” says the letter, on the Guerilla Girls’ Web site. The group says that 97 percent of the 30 artists in the new exhibition at the Broad Museum are white, and 87 percent are men; of the 194 artists in the Broad foundation’s collection, 96 percent are white and 83 percent are male.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Broad told the Times that “women are prominently featured in the opening installation at BCAM, which was curated by Lacma. In fact, 33 percent of the works in the exhibit are by women. One of the largest galleries at BCAM is devoted to Cindy Sherman, whose works the Broads have collected since 1981.”

Michael Govan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s director, discusses Mr. Broad’s philanthropy and other topics in a profile in The Wall Street Journal.

(Free registration is required to view the New York Times article.)

Overlap Between Business and Charity for Clinton Friend Questioned

Former President Bill Clinton’s charity work, relationships with world leaders, and business contacts sometimes profitably overlap, raising questions that may affect his wife’s presidential bid, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper says that Frank Giustra, a Canadian entrepreneur and a friend of Mr. Clinton’s, was introduced by a Clinton aide to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at a 2005 philanthropic event organized by Mr. Clinton. Mr. Giustra has met with Mr. Uribe several times, and last year, a company advised by Mr. Giustra’s firm acquired interests in Colombian oil fields.

Mr. Giustra has traveled often with Mr. Clinton, and has pledged more than $130-million to his philanthropic activities, including the Clinton Global Initiative and the William J. Clinton Foundation.

“Have I used my relationship with President Clinton to benefit me or my business? No,” says Mr. Giustra in a written reply to questions from the Journal. “Have world leaders bent over backwards for me because I’ve accompanied President Clinton on [philanthropic] visits . . .? No. Do I resent any implication to the contrary? You bet.”

The relationship between Mr. Giustra and Mr. Clinton was recently examined in a New York Times article about business dealings in Kazakhstan.

(A paid subscription is required to view the Wall Street Journal article, and free registration is required to view the New York Times article.)

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings is an argument for why cellphone fund raising might be poised to take off.

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion: Recession-Proof Philanthropy

Join our online discussion next week on whether nonprofit organizations can weather a turbulent economy.

Two top fund-raising and management experts will be available to answer your questions.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, February 19, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: Public Perceptions of Charity Spending

Sixty-two percent of the public thinks that charities spend too much money on overhead costs such as fund raising and administration, according to a new study reported on by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

February 13, 2008

Nonprofit Housing Groups Shift Tactics to Cope With Demand

Nonprofit groups that work with distressed borrowers are adjusting their practices to reach more individuals who are having trouble paying their mortgages, reports Reuters. While the demand for nonprofit services in this area is increasing, in many cases the budgets and staff sizes of these groups are not. Many nonprofit leaders have therefore found that holding large information classes for borrowers seems the only way to cope with demand.

As Michael van Zalingen, director of home-ownership services at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, explained in January when his class drew 70 concerned borrowers in South Side Chicago: “A year ago we couldn’t have got 10 people to attend one of these classes. Today we had to turn away about 35 people.”

The goal of nonprofit programs such as Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago is to reach borrowers and either help them get a loan they can afford or get truly distressed borrowers to put their homes up for sale before it is too late. Those who eventually go into foreclosure receive information about the lending scams they may face.

Mark Seifert, executive director of the East Side Organizing Project in Cleveland, which has three counselors on staff, explains that his group would prefer to do as much individual counseling as possible. But, he added, “If I wanted to do only individual counseling, I’d need five more counselors.”

(Free registration is required to view this article on the New York Times site.)

Proceeds From Dell Business Acquisition Go to Charity

The computer maker Dell has announced that it will buy the business e-mail services provider MessageOne in a $155-million cash deal, and that Dell’s founder and chief executive, Michael Dell, intends to donate the proceeds from the sale to charity, Reuters reports.

Mr. Dell and his family are investors in two funds that partly own MessageOne, and the family is expected to receive roughly $12-million from the deal. MessageOne is managed by Mr. Dell’s brother, Adam Dell, who is expected to receive about $970,000 from the sale.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the New York Times site.)

Successful Groups Prove Internet Is Changing Philanthropy

The Internet is changing philanthropy, The Financial Times reports. Several charities in particular are proving how the quick exchange of knowledge, the publicity of pressing social and environmental problems, and new forums for exchanging ideas are providing donors with innovative solutions for solving problems and reaching charities and individuals around the world.

Many Web-based organizations — such as Oxfam Unwrapped, GlobalGiving.com, and UniversalGiving.org — now allow donors not just to find out about causes but also to track the progress of the projects they support.

One of the most popular causes online has been global microfinance projects. Groups such as Kiva.org connect donors with individuals seeking loans through microfinance institutions. Once a loan has been made, donors can then receive e-mail updates on the progress of the loan and the impact on the borrower, emphasizing how the Internet can provide a means of greater accountability.

Carol Adelman, director of the Hudson Institute’s Centre for Global Prosperity, explains: “This new-age global philanthropy is accompanied by the benefits of technology, transparency, accountability, and hands-on directness that’s never been seen before.”

Read a transcript of The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s online discussion with Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva, on how social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn are giving charities an array of new opportunities to connect with donors, volunteers, and supporters.

Student-Loan Groups Face Credit Problems

Borrowers in the auction-rate securities market, including many student-loan organizations, appear to be headed for a financial crunch, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority, a state agency, announced yesterday on its Web site that it would stop making loans under the state’s Michigan Alternative Student Loan program “due to the current and unprecedented capital-markets disruption.” More than 100 Michigan colleges and universities participate in the program.

According to the newspaper, the problem “could soon hit many other borrowers, ranging from California museums to the prestigious Deerfield Academy prep school in Massachusetts.”

Peter Warren, vice president of government relations for the Education Finance Council, which represents nonprofit lenders and state lending agencies, said that while Michigan may be the only state yet to announce a student-loan halt, others are “seriously evaluating” the viability of their programs.

(A paid subscription is required to view this article.)

Dispute Erupts Over D.C. Veterans Shelter

A nonprofit veterans group that runs a shelter for 50 homeless veterans in Washington is facing a hard reality — its shelter, Ignatia House, will be leveled at the end of the month to develop property for the Armed Forces Retirement Home, reports The Washington Post.

If the development gets final approval, the demolished home will be replaced with a mix of buildings to help generate income for the retirement home, which otherwise relies on a trust fund drawn from service members’ paychecks to operate.

Shelter officials say they had expected the home to find another place to house the veterans on its campus, all of whom received honorable discharges. Many have substance-abuse problems. “At no time over the course of four and a half years did we anticipate being displaced,” said Stephanie Buckley, regional director of the U.S. Veterans Initiative, the nonprofit group that runs U.S. Vets as a collaboration with Cloudbreak Development, a special-needs housing developer in California. “We never thought we’d be faced with that.”

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

From The Chronicle: Long-Term Volunteers

Volunteers who keep coming back year after year are a nonprofit manager’s dream, but many charities don’t do enough to cultivate them, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

February 12, 2008

A Charity Levy for Britain's Wealthy?

Affluent British people who do not give at least 10 percent of their incomes to charity should pay an equivalent surcharge in taxes, said Frank Field, former welfare reform minister for Britain’s Labour party, according to The Financial Times.

Mr. Field wants to levy a 10-percent surcharge on British taxpayers’ earnings or investment income of more than $294,095 per year. The British government should create a national endowment fund to distribute the money if the taxpayer does not designate charities to receive his or her money, he added.

Mr. Field’s idea would “encourage richer taxpayers to embrace the responsibilities of wealth,” he said, and raise an estimated $7-billion annually.

Nonprofit News-Media Ventures Increase

As mainstream newspapers struggle with decreased circulation and staff cuts, nonprofit news-media outlets are stepping in to fill the void, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Several nonprofit news efforts have started recently, typically relying on foundations, individuals, and advertising to support their budgets. Perhaps the best financed new effort in nonprofit journalism is ProPublica, in New York, which is led by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

The Voice of San Diego, a three-year-old online newspaper, was “created to fill a gap” in media coverage, says Scott Lewis, the Voice’s executive director.

Like many of the nonprofit media outlets, The Voice focuses its coverage on issues that are not covered in mainstream papers that are worried about increasing circulation and revenue. The newspaper provides “the best coverage of city politics that we’ve had in years,” according to Dean Nelson, a journalism professor at San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University.

See The Chronicle’s article on the growth of nonprofit news efforts.

Charitable Trust Sues 'Lord of the Rings' Producer

New Line Cinema Corporation, which produced the blockbuster trilogy Lord of the Rings, was sued on Monday by the charitable trust of the series creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, reports the Los Angeles Times.

New Line was accused of cheating the trust out of at least $150-million. It has been sued by the British charity and HarperCollins publishers. In its complaint, the Tolkien Trust said that, according to a 1969 contract with the studio that held the original rights to the fantasy series, the trust and other beneficiaries were owed 7.5 percent of gross receipts, minus certain film-related expenses. The lawsuit says that the Lord of the Rings movies have attracted $6-billion in revenue worldwide.

New Line Cinema declined to comment on the lawsuit.

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A Donor's Presence Looms Large on L.A. Museum Scene

After an abrupt reversal by a major donor recently, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has had to defend itself and its ambitious plans to become one of the premiere art museums in the world, reports The New York Times.

Eli Broad — whose name graces, and whose fortune paid for, the museum’s new campus to house contemporary art — seemed likely to donate his entire collection to the museum, part of his very public plan to remake Los Angeles as a world art capital. But late last year, Mr. Broad announced he would give his collection to a new foundation instead, and only lend the work to the Los Angeles County Museum, among other institutions.

This has led to a delicate situation for the museum, which must assert its independence from Mr. Broad while still courting him as a donor, perhaps even trying to convince him to change his mind.

Mr. Broad and his wife, Edythe, ranked No. 10 on The Chronicle’s list of the most-generous donors of 2007.

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Four Masterworks Stolen From Zurich Museum

Thieves stole four 19th-century works of art from a private Zurich museum on Sunday, an estimated $163-million theft, reports The New York Times.

The masterpieces — by Degas, Monet, van Gogh, and Cezanne — were stolen by armed robbers while the museum was open. This brazen theft is unsettling to many in the arts world, particularly as it is the second major theft of art in Switzerland within the week.

The E.G. Buhrle Collection, the site of the most recent theft, located in a quiet residential neighborhood of Zurich, does not have metal detectors nor does it conduct searches of most visitors’ bags. “It is a very bad experience because as museum director you live with these pictures day in day out; you become attached to them like family,” said Lukas Gloor, the museum’s director.

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Transcript: Charities and Politics

Read today’s transcript from our discussion about charities and politics in the 2008 campaign season.

From The Chronicle: Lessons From the Polls

The problems with election polls during primary season highlight the difficulties that charity and foundation leaders can face when they aren’t sophisticated about making the best use of public-opinion polling, according to an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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February 11, 2008

Small Share of Americans Plan to Give Their Tax Rebates to Charity, Poll Finds

Just 4 percent of Americans plan to donate their federal tax rebates to charity, according to a new survey by the Associated Press.

An economic-stimulus bill passed last week by Congress would give most single people a $600 rebate and married couples $1,200. Forty-five percent of people report that they would use a rebate to pay bills, while 19 percent say they would spend the money on consumer goods. Just in one in 25 of the 1,006 adults surveyed would support a charitable cause.

Read a special package in The Chronicle about the effect of a potential recession on charities.

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New York to Investigate Charities for Fraud

The New York Department of Investigation will examine the finances of 30 to 40 charities accused of fraud, reports The New York Post.

The department relied solely on complaints by whistleblowers to gather the names of the groups being investigated. Most of the whistleblowers, according to a department official, Rose Gill Hearn, were accountants asked to create fake invoices or otherwise cook the books to hide misspent funds, including money spent for executives’ personal gain.

Ms. Hearn also chastised groups with “members of the board [of directors] asleep at the switch, not paying attention to sound fiscal controls and their fiduciary responsibility.”

She stressed, however, that the goal of the inquiry is to get rid of crooked officials, not to cause legitimate charities to shut down.

New Leader of a Big Foundation Brings His Activist Vision to the Job

Gara LaMarche, a lifelong activist who has worked on behalf of death-row inmates, gay marriage rights, and democracy in the developing world, will bring his activist’s sense to his new job as chief executive of Atlantic Philanthropies, according to the Financial Times.

Mr. LaMarche’s biggest challenge is to help Atlantic distribute its entire $4-billion endowment by 2020, which will require spending $350-million yearly. Despite all the money it has available to give, Mr. LaMarche says Atlantic will focus its giving in the next few years. It traditionally supports issues related to elderly people, disadvantaged children, public health, and human rights, among others, but Mr. LaMarche declined to say which areas might be cut back.

However, he also touched on new opportunities, including short-term “opportunistic grants” for groups that need money quickly. He promised that, having worked at grant-seeking groups for most of his career, he will not forget the needs of those that the foundation supports.

Judge Rejects University Deal to Sell Art for Ailing University

A Tennessee judge has rejected a proposal by Fisk University in Nashville to sell a valuable collection of paintings and photographs to shore up the college’s finances, reports The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The university had proposed selling paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe (among other works) for $30-million to the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Arkansas, a museum owned by an heir to the Wal-Mart Foundation.

The heir, Alice Walton, has also promised to donate $1-million to restore the campus’s museum, which has fallen into such disrepair that the works were put into storage in 2005. The university would have retained a 50-percent share of the works under the deal.

However, according to Tennessee law, a judge must approve any changes to the conditions of a donation like Ms. O’Keeffe’s, and a local judge ruled last week that the sale would not reflect the wishes of the artist, who donated her works on the condition they be kept on display and never sold.

An unrelated case starting February 19 will determine whether the university must forfeit the collection to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.

Churches Aiding Tornado-Torn Communities

Local churches in Tennessee and Kentucky have played a key role in aiding the towns devastated by tornadoes last week, reports the Associated Press.

Churches have become local distribution points for disaster relief. Storm victims have gathered there, as they once did every Sunday, to receive donated goods, and communities have used the churches to rally themselves.

In addition, churches have helped to comfort people after the unseasonable storms flattened their communities and to mourn the 59 people confirmed dead and hundreds more left homeless. They will also likely play an important role in rebuilding the lost towns.

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From The Chronicle: Why Fund Raisers Need Journalistic Skills

A telling detail, like the make of a prospective donor’s shirt, can make a fund-raising report not just good reading but a useful tool as well, says Bob Levey, a university fund raiser and former journalist, in his new monthly column in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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February 08, 2008

Donations Rise Quickly at Fidelity's Gift Fund

Donors to the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund distributed a total of $1.17-billion to charities of all types last year, the largest amount in its history and a 24-percent increase over 2006, The Boston Globe reports.

Donors create funds at Fidelity they can use like a charitable checking account. The Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, which holds more than $5-billion in assets, has disbursed more than $7.7-billion since its inception in 1991. The organization announced that it raised $1.85-billion in new money last year.

The gift fund ranked No. 4 on The Chronicle’s most-recent annual list of the nonprofit groups that raise the most money for charity.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the Boston Globe site and to view the “Chronicle of Philanthropy piece.)

Dispute Erupts Over Charitable Bequest Plans of Celebrity

Five of the six children of the late singer James Brown have accused his former trustees of hiding an early version of Mr. Brown’s will in order to profit from a 2000 version that leaves the bulk of his estate to charitable trusts, the Associated Press reports.

The former trustees dismissed the allegation in court Thursday, saying that although Mr. Brown had changed his will several times, only the 2000 should be considered valid.

The contents and total value of the estate are not known, but the 2000 version is said to leave his children largely out of the financial portion of the will in favor of charitable trusts.

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Opinion: Veterans Charity Abuses Show Need for Regulation

Congress needs to take action to ensure that charities are properly spending charitable donations, says an editorial in The New York Times.

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, whose Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held hearings on the problems at veterans charities that appear to have spent too much on overhead and too little on real charitable programs, said the abuses are an “intolerable fraud.”

“There is very little regulation in the charity game,” they write, and too much leeway is given to nonprofit officials. Congress must now “follow through with stricter oversight and disclosure rules so Americans don’t have to rely on House committee hearings to know where their money is being misspent.”

Read The Chronicle’s coverage of the latest hearing by the House committee on fund-raising regulation.

(Free registration is required to view the Times article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)

Global Anti-Smoking Campaign Gets Under Way

The World Health Organization unveiled its most ambitious plan to limit the spread of smoking around the world yesterday, The Washington Post reports.

The campaign was boosted by the financial help of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who gave $125-million over two years for global tobacco control and helped pay for the country-by-country survey that provided baseline data for the campaign’s report.

Among the efforts the organization will promote: enforcing smoke-free laws and raising the price of tobacco through taxes.

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Opinion: Profit Motive Trumps Creative Capitalism

Bill Gates is naive to call for “creative capitalism” and corporate philanthropy as a solution to meet the needs of the world’s poor, says an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal.

“The dossier of historical evidence to suggest this would work is as thin as Kate Moss on a diet,” writes William R. Easterly, author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.

What is a more effective method to respond to global poverty? “History has shown that profit-motivated capitalism is still the best hope for the poor,” Mr. Easterly says.

Rather than have “philanthropists choose just which product is going to be the growth engine of a country,” Mr. Easterly suggests that “the parts of the world that are still poor are suffering from too little capitalism.”

The United States and others should focus on making developing countries less hostile to private business and realize that “a New Age blend of market incentives and feel-good recognition will not end poverty.”

Opinion: Junior League Hopes to Halt "Image Problem"

In the midst of a financial crisis, a public battle between the departing president and the board, and the historic appointment of the group’s first black president, the New York Junior League chapter is in a time of major upheaval.

But Charlotte Hays, editor of In Character, writes in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal that the exclusive image of Junior League membership has harmed the group since its inception.

Ms. Hays explains that from its founding in 1901, “The idea [of the League] was that young ladies of a certain background would be trained as volunteers and then go on to become more senior members of the community of good works, ultimately spreading those works to the rest of the country.”

Today, with Gena Lovett, a black woman and the chief operating officer of a Manhattan hedge fund, named president, the League hopes to finally leave its exclusive “white gloved” image behind, says Ms. Hays.

“There is no doubt that the gloved women of yesteryear would be surprised to find the African-American Ms. Lovett at their helm,” she adds. “But what really would have shocked early League ladies is that Ms. Lovett . . . has a job. It used to be that the Junior League was for ladies of leisure. There are not many of those today. The League was bound to change or go out of business.”

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

A controversial new survey of executive pay at Christian organizations.

An aid worker’s first-person look at the tragedy that has been unfolding in Kenya.

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion Next Week: Election 2008

Join our online discussion next week on what the 2008 election might mean for charities.

Some of the top experts on philanthropy and politics will be available to answer your questions.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, February 12, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: How Foundations Can Cool the Planet

Foundations should channel their investments in ways that curb global warming, instead of simply relying on their grant making to curb climate changes, writes Stephen Viederman, former head of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, in an opinion article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

(A paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view this article.)

February 07, 2008

Large Bequest Surprises Diabetes Charity

An 86-year-old Annapolis woman who died in a house fire last March shocked a diabetes group by bequeathing it the largest donation in the organization’s history — $7.3-million, reports The Washington Post.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which had known Helene Whitlock Alley primarily as a $100 donor, became the beneficiary of most of her estimated $8.5-million estate. The source of Mrs. Alley’s money remains unclear, although her deceased father was an accomplished businessman, and she owned Merck stock that she might have purchased before 1949, while she was a secretary with the company.

Mrs. Alley’s donation was motivated by her late brother’s battle with Type I diabetes. In her will, she described her brother’s struggle with the disease as “heart rending, frightening, and inspiring.” Mrs. Alley intended her donation “to further the research to help find a cure for diabetes that at no time requires a diabetic patient to take an organ-rejection agent” after a transplant of pancreatic cells.

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U.N. Benefit Nets Stars, Money, and Criticism

A star-studded benefit at the United Nations on Wednesday night raised $3.7-million to help poor and sick children worldwide, although its mixture of commercial promotion and charity activities drew some criticism, reports the Associated Press. The event, paid for by Gucci and tied to its new store opening in Manhattan, featured both Gucci and Unicef logos on the red-carpet walkway, among other commercial tie-ins.

Attendees, who paid between $2,500 and $10,000 per plate, watched videos of Malawi introduced by Madonna and saw performances by the singers Alicia Keys, Rihanna, and Timbaland. The money raised will be collected by the Gucci Foundation and split between Raising Malawi, a nonprofit organization that operates under the Kabbalah Center International, and the U.S. Fund for Unicef, which supports the United Nations Children’s Fund.

According to Unicef, Malawi has a significant HIV/AIDS problem, affecting almost 1 million people, including 83,000 children.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who has encouraged the use of celebrities to draw attention to humanitarian issues, skipped the event, even though his schedule was free, according to the article. His undersecretary general for administration and management, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, said the office “should have investigated more fully” before approving the event on U.N. grounds and did not support using the event to promote the new Gucci store opening.

However, the secretary-general commented to reporters, “I understand that the main purpose of this event will raise funds for a humanitarian purpose, and I am sure that the proceeds will go to the purpose of this event.”

Chad Set to Pardon Aid Workers

Chad’s president Idriss Deby, speaking on a European radio station, said he was “ready to pardon” six French aid workers convicted of trying to smuggle 100 children out of the country in December, reports the Associated Press. The aid workers had said the children were orphans from the Darfur region, which borders Chad, but investigations showed that most of the children had a living parent or close relative.

The French workers, from the group Zoe’s Ark, were sentenced to six to eight years in prison. Both the case and the prisoners’ transfer created heated public condemnation in Chad, and their pardon would have seemed politically untenable just a few months ago.

However, Chad’s political situation has markedly deteriorated of late, as rebel groups have made significant headway in attacking the government, which they accuse of corruption. According to the International Herald Tribune, France initially pledged to stay neutral in the conflict but has since decided that it is ready to fight the insurgents if necessary, a move the rebel groups condemned.

France’s support of Mr. Deby’s government may have made the aid workers’ pardon politically advantageous. Speaking of the situation on Europe-1 radio, Mr. Deby noted, “‘What does it bring me to have five, six French people in prison?’‘

(Free registration is required to view the AP article on the New York Times site.)

Foundation Gives $20-Million in Grants to Three Miami Arts Groups

The Miami area continues its transition to a major arts center, with a foundation announcing $20-million in grants to three arts institutions on Wednesday, reports The New York Times. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami, also announced a $20-million open-invitation contest for grants that would promote the arts in South Florida.

The foundation will give $10-million to the Miami Art Museum to create a program that brings every public-school fifth grader to the museum. The other two grants, both for $5-million, will go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Miami, and the New World Symphony, a training orchestra based in Miami Beach.

In the past 25 years, the number of nonprofit arts organizations has ballooned from 100 to over 1,200. The Knight Foundation’s chief executive officer, Alberto Ibargüen, notes that the foundation wanted to be “a part of this underlying trend” and that the city’s burgeoning arts philanthropy helped inspire these grants.

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From The Chronicle: Foundation-Expenses Report

Nearly one-quarter of the nation’s 10,000 largest private, community, and corporate foundations did not report any administrative expenses as part of their charitable spending to meet the annual minimum-payout requirement, a new study reported on in The Chronicle of Philanthropy has found.

Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

Essential elements in marketing: fear, hope, and love.

Should Kiva adjust its formula?

Why the executive director model is flawed.

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion Next Week: 2008 Election

Join our online discussion next week on what the 2008 election might mean for charities.

Some of the top experts on philanthropy and politics will be available to answer your questions.

The discussion will be held Tuesday, February 12, at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: Gates Fund Leader Steps Down

After helping to build the nation’s largest philanthropy, Patty Stonesifer has announced she is stepping down as chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

February 06, 2008

Financial Institutions Test "Green" Cards

Several credit-card companies are unveiling new “green” cards that will allow users to channel a percentage of their spending toward efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Among the companies, General Electric’s Earth Rewards MasterCard targets as much as 1 percent of total spending on the card toward emission-reduction projects, while Bank of America’s Brighter Planet Visa matches every dollar spent with one point that can be accumulated and traded in for “carbon offsets.”

Although such cards have been available in Europe for several years, environmentalists in the United States are concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding carbon offsets in a voluntary market. Some critics, such as Leslie Lowe, director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility on Energy and Environment, a nonprofit group in New York, wonder whether this method is an effective means to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. “What I am more concerned about is that it gives people an easy pass: ‘OK, I’ve got my green credit card, so I can do things that are carbon-ridiculous,’” she said.

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Public Broadcasting Decries Proposed Federal Cuts

For the past seven years, Congress has been able to restore the Bush administration’s proposed cuts in federal money to public broadcasting. But, The New York Times reports, this year may be different.

In its proposed federal budget plan, the Bush administration intends to cut in half the $400-million allocated to public broadcasting for fiscal year 2009 and cut $220-million from the $420-million already planned for 2010. Along with these cuts — the deepest proposed in the past eight years — President Bush intends to eliminate funds for 2011, along with any additional funds in 2009 for stations to convert to digital transmission, which is federally mandated.

Local public-television-station executives, however, not only hope to reinstate the cut funds but also plan to call for an increase when they arrive in Washington next week for a day of lobbying. John Lawson, chief executive of the Association of Public Television Stations, said, “I’m confident we will be successful.”

Ken Stern, chief executive of National Public Radio, was less hopeful. He said that although public broadcasters had been successful in fighting off proposed cuts in past years, he noted that it was “an incredibly tight budget year” and that the fight could be “lost in a whole lot of other issues.”

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The Product (Red) Campaign Shakes Off Criticism

A year after the rock star Bono began the campaign known as Product (Red), which takes a cut of sales from popular consumer goods and funnels the money to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa, the results are in — Red and its corporate partners have contributed more than $59-million to the charity. But The New York Times reports that not everyone is cheering.

Some critics of this consumer-driven approach say that there is too little transparency and that efforts like Red are crowding out traditional philanthropic activity. Ben Davis, of San Francisco, who created a Red parody online known as “Buy(Less),” thinks that people should give directly to nonprofits that support AIDS programs in Africa. “Increased consumption in America can’t be the only way to solve Africa’s problem,” Mr. Davis said.

Others wonder whether the campaign is more concerned with advertising than with supporting programs in Africa.

Partner companies pay Red a licensing fee to label one or more of their products “(RED)” and then pay a portion of the sales from those products to the Global Fund. In return, the companies are able to market themselves as socially conscious in hopes of increasing sales. Neither Red nor the companies would disclose revenue or total contributions by company or product. Tamsin Smith, president of Red, emphasizes that “Red is not a charity; it’s a business.”

Despite the controversy over the Red campaign’s approach to philanthropy, beneficiary groups such as the Treatment and Research AIDS Center, in Kigali, Rwanda — which has received $22-million — say that the money from Red has made a real difference. Anita Asiimwe, the center’s managing director said, “The money we get from Red through the Global Fund is helping to save lives. That’s the important thing.”

Red’s contributions make up less than 2 percent of the Global Fund’s total, yet the organization is the fund’s 15th-largest donor, ahead of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland.

For more on the Product (Red) campaign, read The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s coverage, including an article on charity marketing deals and a transcript of an online discussion about the effort.

(Free registration is required to view the Times article, and a paid subscription or short-term pass is required to view the Chronicle article. Access to the Chronicle discussion transcript is free.)

Corporations Report a Rise in Volunteer Options for Employees

Companies are increasingly offering incentives such as time off for volunteer projects and the ability to do volunteer work on company time or for company-organized efforts as a way to attract and retain employees, reports the Associated Press.

Colleen Bramhall, a young consultant for the company Accenture, says that the wealth of her company’s volunteer opportunities has changed her vision of corporate America. “I used to be the one that was working for the man, the one with the corporate job that was the sellout, and now I think my friends are looking at Accenture in a different light, as a sort of corporate citizen,” she said. Ms. Bramhall has been to Sri Lanka and South Africa as a participant in Accenture Development Partnerships, a program that sends employees to work on nonprofit projects in developing countries.

According to David Eisner, chief executive of the federal government’s Corporation for National and Community Service, volunteer programs can help companies retain two major employee groups: younger workers looking for ways to balance work and personal life and retirement-age workers looking for ways to make a difference.

Indeed, Ms. Bramhall said that Accenture’s volunteer efforts work as a retention tool. “I’m the only one of all of my friends that works for the same company that they worked for when they graduated from college,” she said.

Actress Promotes Valentine's Cards For Charity

Actress Julianne Moore has started a Valentine’s Day project to support the nonprofit group Save the Children, reports the Associated Press.

The cards, which are being sold on the charity’s Web site, feature children’s artwork and can be printed or e-mailed through February 14.

A mother of two, Ms. Moore said that she hoped the project would catch on in schools. “I know my kids are very service-oriented, and they’re very into the idea of charity — particularly when it comes to other kids,” she said.

Correction: Philanthropist's Fortune

A Philanthropy Today update on Tuesday incorrectly described the amount of money that James LeVoy Sorenson has available to bequeath to philanthropy. He is worth an estimated $4.5-billion.

From The Chronicle: Response to Bush's Budget Plan

Charities and advocacy groups have expressed alarm at President Bush’s proposals to curtail spending on social services, the arts, and health care as part of the $3.1-trillion for fiscal year 2009 he proposed this week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

February 05, 2008

Philanthropist Bequeaths Fortune to Charity

James LeVoy Sorenson — an inventor and philanthropist, who died January 20 — bequeathed his fortune to charity, reports The Salt Lake Tribune.

Mr. Sorenson’s bequest, the value of which his son declined to disclose, will be handled through the Sorenson Legacy Foundation. The Sorenson family and the Sorenson Companies have given more than $100-million in cash and in-kind gifts through the foundation to nonprofit organizations over the past three years.

Forbe’s magazine had estimated Mr. Sorenson was worth $4.5-billion.

Beneficiaries of Mr. Sorenson’s bequest include Utah universities, science researchers, the Primary Children’s Medical Center, Gallaudet University for the deaf, the Sorenson Multi-Cultural Center, and churches.

Target Chief Executive Donates Millions for Instrument Museum

Robert J. Ulrich has donated tens of millions of dollars to help establish the Musical Instrument Museum, which will be the nation’s only freestanding museum focused on instruments from around the world, reports The New York Times.

The museum, which will be in Phoenix and is due to open in early 2010, will cost about $125-million.

It will include an auditorium, a conservation laboratory, a recording studio, and galleries where visitors can see and hear instruments being played on video.

Approximately $50-million has been raised, with the majority coming from Mr. Ulrich.

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Group Challenges Campaign-Finance Law

Citizens United, a nonprofit group that created “Hillary: The Movie,” a documentary about Sen. Hillary Clinton, is challenging a campaign-finance law that would limit the group’s ability to use television ads to promote the movie, reports the Los Angeles Times.

A three-judge panel ruled last month that the movie is similar to a campaign ad and therefore subject to the rules imposed by the McCain-Feingold Act, which went into effect in 2002. The law makes it illegal to use corporate or union money for “any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication” if it “refers to a clearly identified candidate for federal office” within 30 days of a primary election or a convention or within 60 days of a general election.

James Bopp Jr., a First Amendment lawyer representing the group, has asked the Supreme Court to review the panel’s decision.

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Violence Hinders Relief Efforts in Chad

Recent violence in Chad is threatening a $300-million global aid effort to help millions of people in Chad. According to the U.N. World Food Program, it could hinder food delivery to 420,000 Darfur refugees and already-displaced Chadians.

The death toll from four days of violence in N’Djamena, Chad, is not known, and the estimated number of Chadians who have fled the country varies widely, reports the Associated Press.

Of N’Djamena’s population of 700,000, the U.N. estimates that 20,000 have crossed the Chari River into Cameroon, while World Vision puts that estimate at 300,000.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the New York Times site.)

Editorial: Former President's Fund-Raising Efforts Are Cause for Concern

Former president Bill Clinton’s expressed intention to continue raising money for his charitable organization if his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, were to be elected president raises significant concern for potential conflicts of interest and would require that the William J. Clinton Foundation’s finances be made transparent to protect against any abuses, according to an editorial in The Washington Post.

Mr. Clinton’s joint visit to Kazakhstan with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining tycoon, was detailed last week in The New York Times and raised questions about potential connections between Mr. Giustra’s generous support of the Clinton Foundation and his company’s newly acquired right to buy into uranium projects controlled by Kazatomprom, the state-owned uranium agency in Kazakhstan.

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Transcript: Building Online Networks of Support

Read the transcript of our online discussion today with Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva — a group that connects donors and entrepreneurs in developing countries — who answered questioned on how charities can effectively use social-networking tools to reach potential donors, volunteers, and supporters.

From The Chronicle: Bracing for Tough Times

The faltering economy is starting to affect a growing number of charities and the people they serve, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. In recent weeks, nonprofit organizations have heard from donors who are putting off big gifts, and some groups that rely mostly on small donations have also seen a falloff.

February 04, 2008

Medical Charity Leaves Somalia After Three of Its Staff Members Are Killed

Doctors Without Borders, whose French name is Medecins Sans Frontieres, has pulled out of Somalia after three staff members were killed in a mine explosion in Kismayo, reports CNN.com.

The relief group has evacuated 87 non-Somali staff members from the country. It said in a news release, “As a mark of our respect and given the lack of clarity surrounding the circumstances of the attack, for the time being MSF has suspended all international staff presence.”

The group believes it was an organized attack. The members killed were Victor Okumu, 51, a Kenyan doctor; Damien Lehalle, 27, a French logistician; and a Somali driver named Billan.

Colleges Debate Whether to Accept Donations From Tobacco Companies

Colleges and universities are struggling to decide whether it is ethical to accept financial support from tobacco companies for research or student activities, reports The New York Times.

Within the past few years, 15 public-health and medical schools have spurned donations from tobacco companies. Institutions that have a policy against accepting money from tobacco companies include the medical school at Emory University and the public-health schools at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Louisiana State, Ohio State, and the Universities of Arizona, Iowa, and North Carolina.

However, some college officials believe that such policies harm academic freedom and lead to questions about whether universities should accept money from other controversial sources, such as pharmaceutical or oil companies.

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris U.S.A., defends the company’s grant making, saying, “We think that the research we’ve funded has contributed to the base of scientific knowledge.”

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Growing Controversy Over College Endowments

Endowments are creating a divide between wealthy colleges and other higher-education institutions, forcing increased fund raising and a push to establish endowments at public universities, reports The New York Times.

Facing state budget cuts, the University of California at Berkeley is among the institutions looking to increase its endowment because other elite institutions such as Harvard and Princeton are boosting their financial aid to families who are middle and upper-middle class.

Robert J. Birgeneau, the chancellor of the Berkeley campus, said the decision to build the endowment was made because soon “it will cost less for a student from a family with an income of $180,000 to go to Harvard than for a student with a family income of $90,000 to go to Berkeley.”

Plus: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that at a forum held by the American Enterprise Institute, even critics of college spending said they objected to the federal government setting spending rules for university endowments.

Charles Miller, former chairman of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, said the effort by some lawmakers to impose a minimum spending level is a “totally ineffective” tool for lowering the cost of tuition and “just not sound public policy.”

Mr. Miller also added, “it’s the duty of endowment fiduciaries, not the federal government, to determine the payout policy.”

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Nonprofit Magazine on Migration Influences Policy Debates

A nonprofit magazine about migration is more influential than its small staff and budget might suggest, reports The New York Times.

The Migration Information Source, a weekly online journal published by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group, draws readers from all over the world. It gets about 140,000 unique visitors per month, and its devotees include policy makers, scholars, and migrants. The institute was established six years ago with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the J.M. Kaplan Fund. The group has a $3.5-million budget.

Kirin Kalia is the magazine’s editor, sole employee, and a self-described “migration geek.”

Rubén G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California at Irvine, says the publication is “the best online source of information on migration that I have seen worldwide.”

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Opinion: Objection to California's Bill on Diversity at Foundations

The California Assembly’s passage last week of a measure to force big foundations to disclose information about the diversity of their staffs, boards, and grantees has attracted criticism from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial section.

The bill was passed last week by the California Assembly and is expected to pass the California Senate and reach Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is based on an idea drafted by an advocacy group called the Greenlining Institute, based in Berkeley, and the organization is now taking its case to the U.S. Congress.

The Journal says that focusing so heavily on diversity glosses over the missions of charities and thwarts donors’ intention in making charitable donations.

“If donors are suddenly supposed to allocate grants by the color or sexual lifestyle of the grantee, that donor intent will be distorted at the very least. Presumably we want money for cancer research to support the most promising research ideas, not to be based on whether the labs have a rainbow coalition of PhDs. The goal is to cure cancer.”

The editorial concludes: “Foundations and charities that don’t want to start apportioning their donations by skin color, or between gays and heterosexuals, had better start describing this idea as the political shakedown it is.”

From The Chronicle: White House Seeks to Make Numerous Giving Incentives Permanent

In his budget for the 2009 fiscal year, President Bush today urged Congress to make permanent numerous incentives that encourage Americans to give, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

From The Chronicle: Red Cross Layoffs

The Red Cross plans to lay off at least one-third of the staff of its Washington headquarters, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

February 01, 2008

Community Foundation Seeks Green Charities

A foundation in Southern Florida wants to know — how “green” is your nonprofit organization?

The Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin counties has invited local nonprofit groups to participate in a contest to reward charities that are operating in environmentally friendly ways, reports The Palm Beach Daily News.

Among the categories in the contest: Which charities achieve “the most green with the least green” and “most creative use of recycled materials.” Winners will get free training in nonprofit management and grant seeking.

The foundation, which created an Environmental Endowment Fund in 2001, intends to collect ideas gathered through the contest to help other groups incorporate green practices into their organizations.

Artists Donate Work to Benefit Global AIDS Fund

Last year, artist Damien Hirst sold a skull piece, entitled “For the love of God,” covered by 8,601 pave-set diamonds for $100-million. This year, on February 14 at Sotheby’s in New York, Mr. Hirst expects to fetch up to $13-million through the sale of seven of his works for the Product (Red) auction, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The money raised by Mr. Hirst and the donated works of other artists will go toward the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

Mr. Hirst explains that in the beginning of his career as an artist, “I tried to do everything I was asked to do.” As demand for his time and work grew, Mr. Hirst found it more valuable to work with a few specific charities, such as Survival, Kids Co., and Strummerville, that “raise money for deprived kids with musical backgrounds.”

For charities such as Kids Co., which “runs hand to mouth,” Mr. Hirst says he will “just give them cash to tide them over” if he is unable to donate works.

“In the art world, you can forget,” Mr. Hirst warns. “At these heady heights with so much money around, you can forget what a massive difference that kind of money can make to people who do without. Or at least you can forget if you’re not careful.”

Mr. Hirst personally contacted about 50 other artists to donate works for the auction and received positive responses from roughly 90 percent of them, he says. He adds that while money, art, and philanthropy may continue to have a bumpy relationship, “I like the idea that you can do things that can make a difference, rather than just do it out of guilt.”

Gates Foundation Appoints Official to Step Up Collaboration With Governments

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has hired a former World Bank official for a new position as managing director of public policy at the foundation, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The move reflects the foundation’s growing interest in working more closely with governments worldwide, the newspaper notes.

Geoff Lamb, 63, was a vice president at the World Bank and has been a senior adviser to the Gates foundation since 2006.

Mr. Lamb says he will work with Gates Foundation employees as well as hire new employees to design ways the foundation can do more to influence government policies in areas such as public health, agriculture, and finance.

Mr. Lamb says working closely with governments is critical given the size of the problems the foundation is trying to tackle. “Clearly our resources and our efforts are pretty small compared with the prominence we’ve taken on,” he said. “We need to have just a bit more systematic engagement with the big players.”

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Smithsonian Reviews Executive Travel Expenses

The Smithsonian Institution says a review it conducted of the travel expenses of its 19 museum chief executives reveals that the organization’s leaders are not abusing resources, reports the Associated Press.

The Smithsonian conducted the review in response to December findings that the former director of the National Museum of the American Indian, W. Richard West, spent more than $250,000 in Smithsonian funds on first-class travel around the world over the last four years.

“We’re getting questions, as you can imagine, from members of Congress,” acting Smithsonian Secretary Cristián Samper, who ordered the review, said in an interview this week. “I wanted to make sure our people are out there traveling and using our resources wisely, and I think the answer is yes, they are.”

Although Mr. West spent $105,598 in museum funds on 30 trips last year, averaging $3,520 per trip, the review reveals that most other museum directors spent $1,300 or less per trip.

“I think Rick was clearly was out of the norm in terms of the amount of time he spent out there,” Mr. Samper said. “I’m really trying to turn this page and move the institution forward.”

Although Mr. Samper insists that Mr. West complied with Smithsonian policies, a more comprehensive review of executive travel is being conducted by the Smithsonian’s inspector general.

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Opinion: Foundation Diversity Bill Is Intrusive and Ineffective

California’s legislature is overstepping its bounds by requiring grant makers to disclose information about diversity, write two nonprofit leaders in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times.

David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks, top officials at Community Advocates, in Los Angeles, complain about the State Assembly’s passage this week of AB 624, which would require large foundations in California to reveal information about the gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of its members, its board of directors, its staff, and the owners of all businesses with which the foundation contracts.

The result, they say, is that foundations would “have to drill down into the composition of the organizations to which it makes grants.”

“Those concerned about privacy rights, fairness, and freedom from unwarranted government intrusion should find AB 624 objectionable on countless scores,” Mr. Lehrer and Mr. Hicks write. “It’s now up to the State Senate to stop this offensive legislation, recognizing that it would be pilloried were its authors in Washington rather than in Sacramento.”

While the authors admit that the legislation “stems from benign motives — to increase funding that affects the least advantaged of Californians,” they say that it is wrong to use diversity as a measure of either need or foundation effectiveness.

What’s more, they write, “the state should not be subtly directing where foundations spend their charitable dollars.”

“Just as private individuals don’t want the government looking over their shoulders when they write charitable checks (so long as the recipients are tax exempt and legal), foundations should not have their discretion impinged upon by someone else’s notions of what is appropriate.”

Read more about the bill in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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Give and Take, a Roundup of Nonprofit Blogs

Give and Take is a service of The Chronicle of Philanthropy that rounds up the best postings that appear on blogs about the nonprofit world.

Among the most-recent postings:

A video spoof on a charity is fooling a lot of people.

Should donors support development efforts in dangerous countries?

You can also read previous postings on issues about philanthropic giving, fund raising, and management of nonprofit organizations.

Give and Take is updated regularly throughout the day.

Online Discussion: Building Online Support

Join us on Tuesday for our online discussion on how your charity can effectively use social-networking tools to reach potential donors, volunteers, and supporters.

Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva — a group that connects donors and entrepreneurs in developing countries — will be available to answer your questions.

The discussion will be held on February 5 at noon, Eastern time, and is open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers.

People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of receiving answers during the online discussion.

From The Chronicle: Giving to the Poor

Many donors say they want to support charities that help the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, but their giving patterns don’t support that goal, according to a new study in The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

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