The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Google CEO Named Chairman of New America Board (Chronicle of Philanthropy)

Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive officer of Google, will become the chairman of the New America Foundation’s Board of Directors on June 1, the group announced. He plans to mark his new role by making an an unrestricted $1-million donation to the group.

Mr. Schmidt has served on the foundation’s board since its founding in 1999, but he has not been as actively involved in philanthropy as many of his fellow… more

A Foreign Correspondent Takes Over a Washington Think Tank (Chronicle of Philanthropy)

Steve Coll's introduction to the button-down world of the think tank was tinged with a bit of glamour. Mr. Coll,a well-traveled journalist, won his second Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. After the Pulitzer, Mr. Coll's grasp of history and elegant writing style landed him… more

The art world is all abuzz with the news that a vacationing Scottish museum director, searching through boxes of drawings at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, in New York, came upon what everyone now seems to agree is undeniably a work by Michelangelo. The drawing represents one of only a handful of works by the Italian master in this country and is probably worth more than $10-million.

To the delight of the Cooper-Hewitt, Michelangelo's drawing of a massive candelabrum, replete… more

I recently interviewed a foundation trustee about her institution's payout policy. In explaining why her foundation never strayed very far from the legally required minimum disbursement, she made a telling observation. It went something like this:

The charitable world has few good measurements of social impact and effectiveness. Staff members often contend at board meetings that programs are working. But when pushed, they really can't document performance very well or show what the money is buying in… more

Who should pay for misconduct in a charity? That is the question that the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston faces as it continues to reel under the ever-darkening cloud of sexual misconduct by a significant number of its priests.

After the recent conviction of the archdiocese's most notorious pedophile, John Geoghan, the archdiocese settled the legal claims of a first group of his victims for an estimated $30-million. More priests have been named and more lawsuits are coming. By the time… more

The New Year brings with it the promise of change, reform, and renewal. For the harried and often unappreciated nonprofit manager, the list of possible resolutions is long. Though often muttered quietly and grudgingly, here are some resolutions I have heard nonprofit people whispering in the hallways in recent weeks.

I resolve to:

Figure out a way to use volunteers sensibly. This year, I won't bend to the pressure of my yuppie volunteers to have that big blowout clambake at the end… more

For all the public debate about the strains that the retirement of the baby-boom generation will place on our Social Security and Medicare systems, surprisingly little debate has occurred about the looming crisis in caring for the elderly. After all, the huge number of baby-boomer retirees will require not only their monthly pension and Social Security checks, but also unprecedented amounts of time-consuming and expensive individual care in their final years.

Providing American families with the help they need to… more

The effect of the war against terrorism on civil liberties presents one of the most important challenges facing nonprofit leaders.

On issues ranging from profiling at airports to the use of national identity cards to new limits on Internet privacy, difficult choices await a thoughtful resolution. Rather than approach the issue from the extreme edges of the policy spectrum, nonprofit officials should call for a national discussion about where a middle ground might be found that could guide the nation's political… more

The events of September 11 eclipsed President Bush's plan to funnel more government money to religious charities, and in recent weeks the White House has decided against fighting to get Congress to approve its entire plan. In the short run, at least, the President will try to persuade Congress to pass a few noncontroversial measures, such as tax incentives to encourage people and corporations to give more.

But the president's faith-based plan was in trouble even before the national zeitgeist… more

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, donations of time, sweat, courage, and cash should do more than just make us proud of Americans' capacity for caring. They should ultimately prod us to fashion a new way of thinking about the relationship between public and private action, one that escapes the rigid ideological positions that have taken root over the years.

For much of the past two decades, we have been beholden to two… more