Andy Markowitz

The Annenberg Foundation will begin a new program to provide mentors for the leaders of scores of small Southern California nonprofit and social-services organizations, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The Alchemy program is an outgrowth of the Los Angeles foundation’s Leadership Seminars, which advise nonprofit groups on reorganizing and raising money. Organizations that serve underprivileged and minority neighborhoods and have annual budgets of less than $2-million are eligible to participate.

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As the streets of Port-au-Prince teemed with earthquake survivors searching for food and water, the United Nations and relief organizations said the lack of security has emerged as a key obstacle to providing emergency aid, The Washington Post reports.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday backed a plan to send another 3,500 peacekeepers to Haiti to support the humanitarian effort. Residents in the sprawling tent cities set up in central Port-au-Prince said they had not seen a single international aid group deliver food in five days.

The tally of text-message donations to the American Red Cross for Haiti relief has exceeded $22-million, about one-fifth of the total the charity has raised for the effort and more than 50 times its previous record for emergency fund raising via cell phone, reports the Washington Post and The New York Times.

And the Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean tearfully defended his Yele Haiti Foundation at a press conference Monday, but acknowledged the charity had made mistakes, the New York Daily News reports. Responding to reports that Yele had made payments to for-profit businesses run by Mr. Jean, the singer said that he had never personally profited from the charity’s operations and promised donors that their money would be spent on aiding earthquake victims.

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The Cleveland Orchestra canceled a series of concerts this week and said a Miami residency set to start January 22 is in jeopardy as a strike by musicians entered its second day, Bloomberg reports.

The 101 players went on strike January 17 after rejecting a proposed 5-percent pay cut. Management says it must control costs to deal with a budget deficit and an endowment that has lost one-third of its value since mid-2007.

The strike involving one of the world’s most respected orchestras highlights the steep financial challenge facing symphonies amid the economic downturn and a larger debate over how much contemporary society is willing to pay for top-tier classical musicians, according to The New York Times.

The New York Philharmonic recently reported a record $4.6-million deficit last year, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra musicians last week rejected a new five-year contract and have authorized a strike.

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A Washington state tobacconist who nearly died of smoking-related illness continues to sell cigarettes and cigars but funnels the proceeds to a nonprofit organization he founded to aid people with lung disease, the Tri-City Herald of southwestern Washington reports.

John Lee of Kennewick founded Northwest Lung in 2004, 14 years after he quit smoking and one year after he underwent a double-lung transplant. Since then the sales at his store, Johnny’s Tobacco Shop and Espresso Bar, have provided $50,000 to the one-man charity, which assists transplant patients in the Seattle area.

Ensuring that the donations pouring into Haiti are spent properly poses a challenge given the country’s poor infrastructure and history of corruption and government instability, the Associated Press reports.

Despite receiving billions of dollars in aid from foreign governments and nonprofit institutions, Haiti remains mired in abject poverty, with many homes lacking electricity, sewage disposal, or safe drinking water even before Tuesday’s devastating earthquake.

Beyond immediate search-and-rescue and public-health needs, “I think there’s going to be a number of questions that arise” about where aid money goes, said Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Missouri Democrat and chairman of a House subcommittee on international organizations and human rights.

The music star Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation, a major engine of the unprecedented post-earthquake fund raising via social media and cellphones, might not be the most efficient destination for donations, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Emergency-aid experts and watchdog groups say bigger, more established charities have the expertise and experience to make the most of their resources in a large-scale relief operation, while smaller organizations such as Yele are more effective in areas such as education in more-stable times.

Read more updates on the response to the Haiti crisis in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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