Daily News Roundup: Sandy Hook Charity Drops Megyn Kelly Over Alex Jones Interview

NBC Interview With Alex Jones Prompts Nonprofit Backlash: Sandy Hook Promise dropped NBC News’s Megyn Kelly as host of its gala tonight in Washington, reports The Washington Post. The gun-violence charity formed by families of victims of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., mass shooting says Ms. Kelly is legitimizing far-right radio host Alex Jones, who has promoted a theory that the massacre was a hoax, by featuring him on her program this Sunday.

Health-Care Tumult Brings Boom for Crowdfunding Sites: Republican efforts to replace Obamacare with a plan that could swell the ranks of uninsured Americans would likely speed the growth of sites like GoFundMe and YouCaring, Bloomberg writes. Medical campaigns are already a major crowdfunding category, drawing hundreds of millions of dollars for people seeking help with health-care bills.

Opinion: Better Marketing Could Spur More Giving for Refugees: New York Times business columnist Charles Duhigg digs into why giving to aid to displaced Syrians lags compared with other humanitarian causes. Research on the matter and the fundraising success of Charity: Water suggest appeals that focus on the positive outcomes of a donation do better than those that emphasize suffering, he writes.

Mo. Lawmakers Seek Investigation of Governor’s Nonprofit Ties: A bipartisan group of state senators called for a legislative review of how Republican Gov. Eric Greitens’s campaign used a donor list from a veterans charity he formerly headed and of whether his office is coordinating with an advocacy group formed to promote his agenda, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Hungary Adds to Limits on Foreign-Funded Nonprofits: The country’s parliament approved a measure requiring organizations that get money from abroad to identify themselves as foreign-funded and disclose their contributors, The New York Times reports. Hungarian nonprofit leaders say the move furthers a government campaign to stigmatize groups supported by Hungarian-American financier George Soros and other Western donors.

New Orleans Charities Feel Pinch as City Drops Event-Fee Waiver: Local nonprofits say they are altering their planning and budgeting, and writing smaller checks to groups they support, following the city’s move earlier this year to end charities’ exemption from permit fees for events in public spaces, The Times-Picayune writes. Sign up for next week’s Chronicle webinar on raising more money from events.

Betsy DeVos’s Cabinet Role Shines Light on Family’s Charter School: The education secretary has cited the nonprofit West Michigan Aviation Academy, founded by her billionaire husband, as an exemplar of the benefits of school choice, but its success may have less to do with policy than with philanthropy, The New York Times writes.