In the last century, no one icon has improved the Catholic brand as much as the small woman who founded the Missionaries of Charity, whose image aligns beautifully with that of the new pope. In March a team of Canadian researchers noted the opportunity: “What could be better than beatification followed by canonization of [Mother Teresa] to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful, especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline?”

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Her mother would hear nothing of it.

"We don't need any charity," She bristled.

Of course she was lying. A sudden loss beyond her control. A need for a little help over the hump. Theirs was as honest a case for charity as any. But her sense of pride would not let her admit it. So, my mother's musical development came to an abrupt halt and instead of her dream career, bathed in the footlights of a concert stage, one thing after another, she ended up struggling to raise my brother and me on her own.

The arc of these events conveyed to me for the first time that a separate set of rules exists for the poor. Pride, for example--which they took pains in Sunday school to drum into my head as being among the deadly sins--was, for the poor, a virtue. And Charity, championed--during those same Sunday sessions--as one of the highest virtues of the heart was, in practice, a thing tinged with shame.

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The celebrities competing for the approval of Donald Trump can get big cash payouts for their favorite charity. Each episode sees corporations, celebrity guests, or private citizens putting up money that ultimately goes to whichever competitor managed the winning team.

There’s no way for General Motors, or for the celebrities and civilians hit up for donations, to know exactly where the money will go: that’s decided toward the end of the episode. Indeed, last season’s premiere saw model Patricia Velásquez deeply upset; she’d worked with fundraising contacts to raise money for a charity with which she was deeply associated, but because her team lost, the money all went elsewhere.

And some of the charities, according to an audit of selected charities performed by independent evaluator Charity Navigator at Salon’s request, may be less-than-ideal custodians of charitable donations. While many of the charities are unimpeachable, future donors might still pause before throwing money at “Apprentice” before knowing where it’ll end up. (We reached out to Donald Trump's camp to ask about how they vet charities for "Apprentice" and have not heard back.) Here's a look at some "Apprentice" charities that we flagged for Charity Navigator's review -- and that fell short of the evaluators' best practices.

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The actor serves as an ambassador-at-large for the impoverished nation, which years later is still struggling to recover from the natural disaster. Although at its highest, 1.5 million people were displaced, International Organization for Migration reports that more than 347,000 Haitians are still without homes.

Penn's spokeswoman told the New York Post that the charity will “support the residents of Delmas 32 to demonstrate that something fundamentally different can come from a ‘slum’ in one of the poorest cities in the world."

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The story has gone viral: A group got together at Applebees. When the tab came the minister wrote on the ticket, “I give God 10 percent, why should I give you 18?” She scratched through the automatic large-group tip and substituted a fat zero and signed it with the word “Pastor” in front of her name. The waitress posted an image on Reddit. The pastor called to complain. The waitress got fired. The internet went wild. Last I saw, one story had 80,000 comments and counting.

In reality, the pastor simply exposed something that is all too common to Christian thinking: the sense that giving to the church and to religious charities is the be-all and end all of generosity. As indignant reactions to the Applebee’s incident show, service workers sometimes pay the price:

“I worked at the Outback Steakhouse for 3 years and we ALL dreaded Sundays.”

“The Sunday after church crowd were allways the worst tippers. I found another line of work.”

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That's what science-fiction writer John Scalzi has done -- and in the process, he's raised more than $50,000 in pledges for Emily's List and the Human Rights Campaign, specially chosen to earn the ire of a blogger Scalzi calls "my racist sexist homophobic dipshit."

Every time Scalzi's online nemesis -- a former WorldNetDaily columnist who writes under the name Vox Day -- used his name or called someone by a derogatory nickname, Scalzi set aside $5 for charity -- and his readers pitched in, too, raising tens of thousands for charities designed to uplift women, minorities and gays. Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network and the NAACP also benefit; Scalzi capped his own donation at $1,000 and his readers took over from there.

"The whole point of this is not to intimidate him to stop speaking. You will not get this guy to stop speaking. He sees this as a contest, as a battle of wills," said Scalzi, in an interview with Salon. Giving money to charities like RAINN and the NAACP is, he says, "an extra stab in the eye."

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Tomes can and have been filled about the problems underpinning Cameron's Big Society. One issue among many is that the charitable giving of the very wealthy is an inconsistent resource. As new findings by the Chronicle of Philanthropy show, major charitable gifts in the U.S. dropped by 30 percent in 2012:

The largest gifts announced by American philanthropists in 2012 totaled nearly $5.1 billion, but $3 billion of that was from Warren Buffett’s promise in August to give stock valued at $1 billion to each of three foundations run by his children.

Without Mr. Buffett’s pledges, the biggest gifts announced in 2012 would have totaled only $2 billion — far less than 2011’s $2.6 billion.

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Enter: Radi-Aid, a campaign to send radiators to frostbitten Norwegians. Watch as a rapper called Breezy V explains the perils of sub-zero temperatures, and let's Africans know that they have the power to help:

In Norway kids are freezing / It's time for us to care / There's heat enough for Norway / If Africans would share

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She said the bell ringing starts in the morning, clangs all day long, then continues into the night. According to her calculations, she listens to 40 hours of Salvation Army bell ringing every week, for five weeks a year, or 200 hours a year.

“I don't get a break,” she said. “It makes my blood pressure go sky high.”

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Camfed helps fight poverty by educating and empowering girls in rural communities throughout Africa.

Fred's Team participates in marathons and allows members to create events all over the world to support lifesaving cancer research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The Lower East Side Girls' Club provides a place where girls and young women can grow, learn, have fun and develop confidence in themselves and their ability to make a difference in the world.

North Shore Animal League is the world’s largest no-kill animal rescue and adoption organization.

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"There were a range options.

"We discussed the book burning while getting the message across that this book is a dangerous trend.

"I think we've got a culture now which has completely sexualised women and in which women feel obligated to take part in that culture. We want to draw a line under that.

"We will be cutting them up, using them for toilet roll and sticking them on our compost heap and they will go back into the ground... although the ideas they represent will continue."

 

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Romney reportedly took advantage of a loophole, called a charitable remainder unitrust or CRUT, which allows someone to park money or securities in a tax-deferred trust marked for his or her favorite charity, but which often doesn’t pay out much to the nonprofit. The donor pays taxes on the fixed yearly income from the trust, but the principal remains untaxed. Congress outlawed the practice in 1997, but Romney slid in under the wire when his trust, created in June 1996, was grandfathered in.

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“This will be a large, costly relief response and we need help now,” said Charley Shimanski, senior vice president of Disaster Services for the Red Cross, in a release. Shimanksi urged that people donate funds to the relief efforts. More information about giving money and donating blood to the Red Cross can be found here. According to the organization, "nearly 100 Red Cross blood drives have already been canceled due to the storm, and there could be more as the week goes on. This means a loss of as many as 3,200 blood and platelet products." The charity noted, "If anyone is eligible, especially in places not affected by the storm, they are asked to please schedule a blood donation now." The New York Blood Center is also asking for blood donations to prevent shortages.

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The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) was the largest Muslim charity in the United States until three months after 9/11, when the Bush administration shut it down following reports that the group had donated a portion of their foundation funds to schools and hospitals in Gaza through a "Zakat" (charity-giving) Committee that allegedly had connections to Hamas. After subsequent raids on the charity leaders' homes and offices, arrests, and two trials (the first in 2007 ending in a hung jury), the Holy Land Five were convicted of conspiracy under the Material Support to Terrorists statute and received sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years in federal prison.

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Usada last week published a 1,000-page report which concluded the Texan and his United States Postal Service team ran "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".

Armstrong announced he would not contest charges handed down by Usada in August.

Usada promptly stripped the 41-year-old of all results since 1 August, 1998, including his record run of seven Tour de France triumphs from 1999 to 2005, and banned him for life.

Usada sent the UCI its reasoned decision last week and published an abbreviated 200-page version on its website, revealing the scale of the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Much of the detail came from testimony of 11 of Armstrong's former team-mates, who were given six-month bans.

Although Armstrong had been active on Twitter, he had not commented in public until Friday night when he appeared at the 15th anniversary celebration of his charity Livestrong.

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Perry tells Atlanta station WSB-TV he decided to give Alicia Day a brand new van after he saw a news report about the theft this week.

Authorities say Day's 2000 Chrysler Town and Country van was stolen from her Decatur driveway sometime Sunday night.

Day, who uses a wheelchair, told WSB she prides herself on being independent and works part-time as a greeter at Home Depot. Her mother relied on the van to take Day to work and to doctor appointments.

Day said "my mouth just dropped to the floor" when she learned Perry would give her a new van.

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Information from: WSB-TV

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The initiative has received broad praise in the media, but little focus has gone into the pledge's consequences. Light digging into the details, however, shows the pledge to be a very open-ended promise indeed.

First, there is nothing binding in the pledge, described on its website as a "moral commitment to give, not a legal contract." No doubt the public and social pressure could shame someone with a spare half-billion to follow through, but where this money goes is another question entirely. Giving Pledge guidelines note:

The pledge asks only that the individual give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charitable organizations after their death … Each person who takes the Giving Pledge makes an individual decision about which particular causes or organizations they wish to support.

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Check out our slide show introducing some the Buffett-Gates pledges.

[slide_show id=13016062]

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State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced Tuesday that Putin had sent a letter about withdrawing the agency to Washington last week. Reuters reported that analysts see the Kremlin's decision as reflective of "Moscow's hostility toward U.S.-funded groups that seek to promote democracy and the rule of law in Russia."

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now at the Brookings Institution, told Reuters:

They [the Russian government] see Aid's efforts in Russia as being a prime funder of the NGOs that are concerned about their elections and concerned about the regression of democracy in Russia.

According to the Washington Post, since 1992, USAID has provided $2.6 billion to Russia. The appropriation in 2012 included $34.6 million for democracy, human rights and governance, $15.8 million for health and $2.1 million for education.

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The lyrics are based on interviews with a cute group of kids from Wellington, New Zealand. McKenzie and Clement asked them questions about what it means to be sick, how to raise money and what they think of  "The Muppets" (for which McKenzie wrote an Oscar-winning song, solo).

On being sick after drinking bubble mixture:

Jemaine: What were you thinking, drinking bubble mixture?
Girl: I wanted to turn into a bubble.

One boy's conception of the financial system:

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