– It took 32 days for Fatima Mohammed to make it from her drought-racked farm in Somalia to the relative safety of a sprawling refugee settlement in northeastern Kenya. There were days, she recalled, when her children were so thirsty that they could not walk and the men in her family would ferry them ahead, returning to carry two more children in their arms.

Fatima Mohammed told Catholic News Service that her family had lived through drought before, but that support from aid agencies helped them survive until the rains returned.

“This time, al-Shabaab won’t let them in,” she said, referring to the Islamist group that controls portions of Somalia. “So when our animals started dying, our only choice was to stay and die ourselves, or else start walking for Kenya.”

Read it all.

A group of economists is launching a charity with a simple but radical plan: Give money to very poor people, and let them spend it however they want.

The recipients live in rural Kenya, typically in mud huts with dirt floors. They make about $1 a day.

The charity is called GiveDirectly. It’s the outgrowth of relatively new technology, and a very old economic idea.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Watch it all–please.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has earned a fierce reputation for defending Muslim civil rights.

Middle Tennessee Muslims turned to the group this year over a proposed state law they feared would threaten their faith. When vandals torched a Columbia mosque and construction equipment at the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro site, CAIR demanded authorities investigate both incidents as hate crimes.

But the Washington, D.C.-based group’s work is being threatened as it faces scrutiny for failing to file tax returns.

Read it all.

Charitable giving recovered somewhat last year, according to new estimates by the Giving USA Foundation, but experts are predicting that this year will present more challenges to nonprofit fund-raisers.

Individuals, companies and philanthropic institutions made gifts and pledges totaling an estimated $290.89 billion in 2010, an increase of 2.1 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis over a revised estimate of $284.85 billion the year before.

The increase was the first since 2007, when the recession started and led to the biggest decline in giving in more than 40 years.

Read it all.

When Kasey Sands and her family returned home last month a few days after a tornado flattened much of Joplin, Mo., a dozen strangers were removing trees toppled in their yard.

“I asked them who they were, and they said they were veterans,” says Sands, 27. “They said they like to help with peace and not just with war.”

They were Team Rubicon, a non-profit group of veterans formed after the 2010 Haiti earthquake to help in the immediate aftermaths of disasters. They also raced in after tornadoes struck Alabama in April and following earlier crises in Chile, Burma, Pakistan and Sudan. More than 500 people have volunteered; 25 were in Joplin for a week.

Read it all.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Businesses, nonprofits and informal groups of friends in southwest Missouri are joining together to offer what help they can to victims of the Joplin tornado.

The generosity pouring into Habitat for Humanity in Springfield has, on a couple of occasions, choked up Eric Allen, director of the ReStore.

He estimated 30-40 people came with donations on Tuesday. Some were low-income families who have received homes through Habitat. Others were tradespeople who regularly make donations to the organization or shoppers who appreciate bargains at the ReStore.

Read it all.

BOB FAW, correspondent: Question: What do this longtime alcoholic, this up and coming project manager, this receptionist who was homeless, and Noah Haynes, who just turned one, have in common? Answer: The chance at a better life because of this former corporate high-flyer and mother of four.

NANCY MURRAY (Builders of Hope): We’re building houses. We’re rescuing houses that are slated for demolition, rebuilding them and making them available and affordable to families who otherwise would be living in pretty substandard conditions….

Read or watch it all.

As recession-racked cities struggle to balance their budgets with everything short of feeling behind sofa cushions for loose change, a growing number are seeking more money ”” just don’t use the word taxes ”” from nonprofit institutions that occupy valuable land but by law do not pay property taxes.

Boston has been sending letters to its largest nonprofit institutions this year, telling them the value of their land and asking them to begin making annual payments that would eventually rise to a quarter of what they would owe if they paid property taxes. Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel of Chicago wants the city to begin charging water fees to nonprofits, which have been spared them in the past. And the mayor of Providence, R.I., Angel Taveras, cited Boston’s example this month when he called on nonprofits to pay more money to the city.
“Every citizen, every city worker, every taxpayer, every business and every organization ”” including tax-exempt institutions ”” must share part of the burden of saving our city,” Mr. Taveras said in his budget address. He proposed closing Providence’s $109 million budget gap by shutting schools, laying off workers, cutting the Police and Fire Department budgets and raising taxes on homeowners as well as seeking larger payments from the city’s prestigious universities and other nonprofit institutions.

Read it all.

Nearly half the charities and voluntary groups in Yorkshire are expecting to reduce staff numbers over the coming weeks as funding cuts bite, a new study suggests.

Almost 50 per cent of the “third sector” organisations which responded to a survey by Involve Yorkshire and Humber ”“ an umbrella group representing charities across the region ”“ said they were planning to reduce their workforce over the next three months to help to cut their costs.

The study represents yet another blow to David Cameron’s Big Society project, with critics having warned for months that cuts to local authority budgets would have a fatal knock-on effect for many charities which rely on councils for much of their fnding.

Read it all.

Charities are seeing improvements in fundraising, but progress is slow, a report out today says.

Fewer charities reported declines in fundraising last year compared with 2009.

But a larger percentage of organizations reported bringing in about the same amount of revenue both years, says the report by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, a coalition of six organizations that focus on philanthropy.

Read it all.

With South Carolina facing a projected $700 million budget shortfall next year, it’s important not to overlook a sector of our economy that has the power to both stimulate economic growth and provide a wide range of social good: the nonprofit sector.

According to the S.C. Association of Nonprofit Organizations, public charities employ more than 7 percent of the state’s workforce and generate nearly $13 billion annually in revenue.

In addition to improving social and economic equity, human and environmental health, access to opportunity and community vitality, nationally the nonprofit sector accounts for 5 percent of gross domestic product, 8 percent of wages and salaries and 10 percent of employment. If the nonprofit sector in the United States were a country, it would be the eighth-largest economy in the world, ahead of Canada, Spain, Brazil and Russia.

Read it all.

As the extent of the death and destruction from the massive disaster in Japan comes into focus, religious relief organizations are sending and supporting teams to assess the damage.

Groups such World Vision and Baptist World Aid have teams on the ground determining what kinds of experts and supplies will be needed in the recovery from the earthquake and tsunami that struck Friday (March 11).

Rachel Wolff, a spokeswoman for World Vision, said a relief manager who worked on the scenes of earthquakes in Haiti and Pakistan was stunned by the extent of the destruction.

Read it all.

Houses of worship and other charities often aren’t in competition for dollars but instead tend to reap donations from similar donors, a new study shows.

Slightly more than 50 percent of people who financially supported congregations also gave to at least one charitable organization in the last year, according to a study conducted by Phoenix-based Grey Matter Research Consulting.

Read it all.

Caught this one on the morning run–I thought it was fair. Watch it all–KSH.

Panera Bread will open a nonprofit restaurant Monday in Portland where customers can pay what they wish for food
.
It’s the third “Panera Cares” community cafe for the company and its first West Coast location.

Panera (PNRA) opened community cafes last year in Clayton, Mo., and Dearborn, Mich. The restaurants are owned and operated by a nonprofit arm of the national restaurant chain, which receives no profit from the business.

Read it all.

The last few years have proven financially tumultuous for millions of Americans, who have passed on their troubles on to nonprofit organizations and places of worship. So what does that mean for charitable giving as 2010 draws to a close? Just like the reasons for giving, the answers are diverse. One theme, however, stands out: churches and Christian organizations must make significant changes to stay relevant in an era characterized by diminishing middle class incomes, growing need, and changing donor demands.

In a recent conversation on charitable giving, I spoke with “Jeff,” a friend from California. In his thirties, Jeff admitted to having extra money to give to charity, but not enough time to really investigate who or what he could start supporting. When I asked him what causes he currently supports, Jeff said he still gave monthly to an orphanage where he had volunteered in India several years ago. The orphanage doesn’t many updates, but the experience of volunteering – although it was years ago – makes his monthly gift an unquestioned and essential part of his life today.

Jeff’s experience isn’t an isolated one. A recent report on “High Net Worth Philanthropy,” released by The Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University, indicates that firsthand experience with an organization’s work is frequently linked to a long-term giving commitment.

Read it all.

Christians and atheists are fighting again””this time over who can raise more money for charity.

The Christian and atheist communities on the online forum Reddit are in a battle to raise the most money for their causes. In the spirit of Christmas (or in atheists’ case, human generosity), community members are even donating money to each other’s groups.

The Reddit.com social networking site allows users to rate the popularity of various websites, as well as join like-minded communities, including groups like reddit.com/r/christianity and reddit.com/r/Atheism.

Read it all.

It would be reasonable to ask why the government should subsidize charitable contributions at all. But for now, let’s discuss this simpler and more politically relevant question: If we are going to continue subsidizing these donations, what is the best way to do it?

First, I should clarify a simplification I’ve made. In the current system, strictly speaking, your eligibility to deduct a charitable contribution doesn’t depend on whether you have a big mortgage. But it might as well. You can deduct charitable contributions only if you itemize rather than take the standard deduction, and the most common way a household collects enough deductions to make itemizing worthwhile is to have a big mortgage. (Living in a high-tax city like New York can also help a taxpayer cross that threshold, because state and local taxes are deductible, at least for now.)

But I challenge anyone to justify a system in which we essentially subsidize contributions made by people with big mortgages. For one thing, this set-up magnifies the already large distortion created by the mortgage interest subsidy, since having a mortgage qualifies taxpayers for other subsidies as well.

Read it all.

When Jermaine Robinson got out of Rikers Island jail last March, he had nowhere to live and few real prospects for finding a job. But he did have something that would prove almost as valuable: The address of the storefront Harlem office where Getting Out and Staying Out operates.

“Without them, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am right now,” 23-year-old Robinson says.

The nonprofit, founded by retired cosmetics executive Mark Goldsmith six years ago, has helped some 1,500 young men incarcerated at Rikers chart new lives.

Only about 20 percent of those who go through the program return to prison, compared with nearly 60 percent for Rikers as a whole.

Read or listen to it all.

Along with jobs and 401(k)s, a major casualty of the Great Recession has been charitable giving. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, America’s charities report an 11% drop in contributions in the past year alone. There’s one big exception: Charitable contributions to religious groups dropped by only 0.1% from 2007 to 2009.

Americans are generous people. In 2006, as detailed in our recent book, “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” 80% of all Americans reported having made a charitable contribution in the previous year. But some””the religious””contributed more than others.

Of the most secular fifth of Americans, two-thirds said they gave money to charity in the previous year. That’s an impressive number, but it pales next to the 94% of the most religious fifth who reported making a charitable donation.

Read it all.

The lower the temperature, the longer the line out Crisis Ministries’ door.

The 124-bed Charleston homeless shelter already is inching toward its overflow capacity, although winter does not start officially for another week. Lows this week have reached the 20s, and even chillier temperatures are forecast for next week.

“We typically don’t see this kind of weather until January,” said Amy Zeigler, grants manager for the shelter.

Read it all.

Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook and the chief digital organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, knows a thing or two about building online communities.

Now he is applying his expertise to a new venture called Jumo, which aims to connect people with nonprofits and charitable organizations.

The site, which is being unveiled on Tuesday, aims to “do what Yelp did for restaurants,” Mr. Hughes said, indexing charities “to help people find and evaluate them.”

Read it all.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all-wonderful stuff.

Watch it all.

Donations to the nation’s biggest charities dropped 11 percent last year, a decline that was the worst in the two decades since The Chronicle started its Philanthropy 400 ranking of the organizations that raise the most from private sources.

Nonprofit organizations say they don’t expect to have done much better by the time 2010 ends. More than one in four of the groups provided projections for 2010, and the median change they predicted was an increase of just 1.4 percent.

Read it all.

Here is the introductory blurb–

Caroline Cox was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s, and since then she has been using her seat in Britain’s House of Lords to speak out against injustices around the world on issues ranging from slavery in Sudan to the persecution of Christian minorities around the world. When she isn’t sitting in the Lords, the ‘battling Baroness’ is traveling the world on behalf of HART – The Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, an organsiation she founded several years ago.

Listen to it all.

This is a great piece–and I like her five H’s. Watch it all–KSH.