Where Most Needed

Save Darfur Coaltion: Advocacy Ads Aggravate, Director Fired

Executive director fired—it might be due to complaints from groups on the ground or from a financial company targeted in a divestment campaign.  Competing rationales pit the New York Times against the Boston Globe.

Beware the $100 Laptop

What some propose as the solution to the digital divide just may be the twenty-first century version of "let them eat cake" from the young and wealthy digital elite in the US, described in a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. 

Compensation and Governance at the US Holocaust Museum

After the criticism of the Smithsonian for its CEO's compensation, a comparison raises doubts about the reasonableness of another institution's top salary.

The Money to be Made in Microfinance

Harvard provides an example of the claims being made about the business opportunity of lending to the poor, thirty years after the founding of the Grameen Bank.

Attorneys are Largest Beneficiary of Alicia Keys' Charity

Start up costs and executive salaries represent a big chunk of expenses, while the organization makes just eight substantial grants.  The web site still proclaims "Don't pay for bureaucracy pay for life." 

Google Buys Fun Statistical Visualization Tool from Swedish Nonprofit

The entertaining professor who founded the organization may feel a twinge of regret for going the charity route. 

Where Bono Blunde(red)

A bad PR week for (Product)Red orchestrated out of San Francisco raises doubts about the prospects for a long-term sustainable charity campaign (sorry, business model) based on product sales without grassroots fundraising. 

Looking at Foundations as if They Mattered

A professor sees potential in the rise of incredibly large philanthropic gestures.  But I wonder whether the Gates Foundation is already spread too thin to expect real impact. 

Machismo and the Microfinanciers

Muhammad Yunis won the Nobel peace prize for transforming the business of loan sharks into microcredit for poor women.  A new generation of (male) market-oriented investors could be reversing the process. 

Behind the Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt Gifts

Doctors Without Borders is a familiar name, but Global Action for Children is not a registered charity.