• The McCune Foundation's wealth, tied to stock in National City, plummets, hampering its ability to help nonprofits in the Pittsburgh area.  [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

• Traditional microlenders voice disapproval of market-oriented model of microfinance, with its emphasis on investor returns.  [New York Times]

• Rare diseases struggle against more common killers in the race for funding research studies.  [Associated Press]

• Fisk University and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum argue over terms of the artist's gift to the school.  [Associated Press]

• A group of students, alumnae, art donors, and former employees of Randolph College file motions to keep the financially ailing school from selling four paintings.  [Associated Press]

• eBay launches site allowing ordinary investors to buy securities aimed at improving conditions in the world's poorest countries.  [Reuters]

...When it hits Doonesbury. This Sunday's strip featured a reference to Muhammed Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and a (humorous) discussion of microfinance by Gary Trudeau's corps of soldiers stationed in Iraq. Amazing (though the joke was on Halliburton). Here's a link to the full strip.

• Melinda Gates shares lessons, mistakes at the Council on Foundation's annual conference.  [Associated Press]

• The National Park Foundation will take over efforts to raise $30 million for the Flight 93 memorial.  [Associated Press]

• Nonprofits adopt business methods to help the poor — and make a profit.  [Seattle Times]

Seattle Times: What a difference a peace prize makes.  A month after Muhammad Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, the work of the so-called banker to the world's poor is in the global spotlight, giving a major boost to efforts to relieve poverty by making tiny loans to people who have no access to banks.

Gift Hub: A lot more in Pierre of Adam Smith than Aristotle or Jesus. Will Pierre mature? Or is this a taste of what "philanthropy" will mean as our high tech people, relatively innocent of the liberal arts, or familial traditions of public service, impose a venture capital framework on all they do?

New York Times:  This year, as never before, the line between philanthropy and business is blurring. A new generation of philanthropists has stepped forward, for the most part young billionaires who have reaped the benefits of capitalism and believe that it can be applied in the service of charity. They are “philanthropreneurs,” driven to do good and have their profit, too.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Heifer International expects to scale back plans for its “global village” in Little Rock after some of the charity’s donors balked at the project’s $64 million price tag. The project was designed to include eight villages encircling a 45-foot mountain, classrooms and holding areas for animals. Its cost would be just $ 3 million less than Heifer spent in 2005 on all of its operations.

Mind Petals: The Global Fund for Women was not started by three incredibley weathly women. It was started by three working women who were deeply committed, passionately immersed, in a notion that you could promote social change by investing in women. In Spanish the words for invest and invert are the same…we would turn the traditional model of philanthropy on its head. It does not require a lot of money to invest in philanthropy for social change.