Where Most Needed

Roger Clemens Foundation Could Use Some Juice

The pitcher's charity foundation stages a golf event and sells memorabilia, and a significant amount of grants go to places that aren't mentioned in the organization's web site.

Philadelphians Dare to Question WHYY Executive Salaries

Staff, a newspaper columnist, and a local magazine take on the CEO of the local public broadcasting outlet for excessive compensation and poor performance. 

Discounting Social Capital

Robert Putnam's latest research begins to show the limits of the social capital concept, to put it kindly. 

Jerry Lewis & Don Imus: The Downside of Charity-Celebrity Co-Dependency

Hitching a charity's reputation to a single individual is a high-risk strategy that pays off—until it doesn't.

Levi Strauss Heirs Pursue a New Vision of Philanthropy

And yet, despite initiatives in community development, gay & lesbian rights, and immigration policy, large civic gestures still define the principal foundation of the Haas family. 

Voluntourists Are Considered Gawkers after Tahoe Fires

Every disaster site has to contend with the effects of convergence of people, of communications, and of material on an infrastructure that is already damaged by the disaster.   

Natural History Museums Face Apocalypse

Declines in funding and a public perception of institutions as boring are leading to a crisis that threatens their extensive, behind-the-scenes scientific research. 

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.

Charity Restaurants Trade Work for Food

One World Everybody Eats in Salt Lake City and SAME Cafe in Denver try out different social venture models for feeding those in need. 

Creation Museum: Let There Be Loot

Having freed themselves from the bonds of both theology and science, the promoters of the museum (which is organized as a charity) seem mostly to be singing from the Walt Disney marketing hymnal.