Daily News Roundup: Red Ink Prompts March of Dimes to Sell Headquarters

March of Dimes Puts National Office on the Market: Following several years of multimillion-dollar losses driven by rising pension costs and weak investment returns, the iconic children’s charity is selling the White Plains, N.Y., headquarters it has occupied for three decades, Hudson Valley daily The Journal News reports. Read a Chronicle special report on how three venerable charities have retooled to spark growth.

How Carnegie Medal Winners Created Their Giving Game Plans: Hedge-fund pioneer Julian Robertson, eBay billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, and other recipients of this year’s Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy talk to New York Times wealth columnist Paul Sullivan about the roots of their giving, and how and why they chose their chief causes.

Opinion: Big Grant Makers’ Mission Investing Distorts Market: In aligning their investments not just with social goals but also with government spending priorities, Ford, Heron, and other major foundations put a “pretty big thumb on the scale” in picking winners and losers in areas such as housing and clean energy, conservative philanthropy leaders James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer Riley write in The Wall Street Journal (subscription). See a Chronicle special report on the growth of impact investing among foundations and charities.

Miami Nonprofit Suspends President Amid Land-Deal Inquiry: The St. John Community Development Corporation temporarily removed Ola Aluko pending a review by Miami-Dade County prosecutors of a deal in which a company created by Mr. Aluko purchased a vacant property and sold it months later to the affordable-housing nonprofit at nearly four times the price, reports The Miami Herald.

Opinion: 3 Reasons to Consider Switching From Nonprofit to For-Profit: Karim Abouelnaga, who founded Practice Makes Perfect seven years ago to help school districts run summer-learning programs aimed at narrowing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps, explains in Entrepreneur magazine why he converted the organization into a benefit corporation.

Lawsuit Claims Fla. Owes $1 Billion in University Donation Matches: The class-action suit filed on behalf of two recent University of Florida graduates concerns the state government’s suspension in 2011 of rules requiring it to match private giving to public universities, the Tampa Bay Times writes.