The news that former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff may have defrauded investors of as much as $50 billion sent yet more waves through the jittery financial markets. Those waves ended up being tsunamis for some charities, at least three of which will close their doors entirely as a direct result.

David Talbot seemed like a trustworthy Christian businessman to the members of New Horizon Fellowship, a new church starting up in Wyckoff, N.J. He "talked the talk" of an evangelical Christian, according to Bill Werner, one of the elders at New Horizon.

But according to Werner, and now according to the attorney general of the state of New Jersey, he didn't "walk the walk." That is, if you don't count a "perp walk": New Jersey has sued Talbot because he "operated a fraud" by selling over $500,000 in unregistered securities "which promised high yield returns."

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Rich people are different from the rest of us." Ernest Hemingway wryly added: "Yes, they have more money."

Rich people who want to give away their wealth in their lifetimes have special problems. Bill Gates famously said, "Giving away billions of dollars without ruining the organizations you give to is not easy."

NEW YORK CITY-Many New Yorkers walk past 90 Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan without knowing they are walking past the New York City Rescue Mission. The three-story yellow-beige brick building is unimpressive. A vertical sign above the entryway reads "New York City" in small, washed-out letters, and "Rescue Mission" in a faded font.

Will the nation's economic storm zap U.S. charities? While the data won't be in until well after the holiday giving season, the nation's nonprofits are already bracing for a blow.

World Vision's Phillipe Guiton, for example, said his group plans to trim hiring, a move that will likely affect the delivery of overseas aid. "What we are going to do now is to issue an order to reduce spending, to delay recruitment, delay purchases of capital assets, etc., until we can see clearer how much our income has dropped," Guiton said.

When Jason Kovacs and his wife Shawnda were newly married, they developed a strong passion for adopting. "We were convicted by James 1:27, which said that 'true religion' involved looking after orphans," Kovacs said. But as a young couple on the staff at a church-Minneapolis' Bethlehem Baptist Church-the estimated $20,000 needed to adopt a child was simply beyond their means.

Matt Bennett is founder and president of the Christian Union, an organization attempting to recover a vital Christian expression on the eight Ivy League campuses-seven of which began as explicitly Christian colleges. (Cornell is the exception.)

Bennett is unapologetic in proclaiming that as the Ivies go, so goes America. After all, those colleges have produced a disproportionate number of U.S. political and legal leaders, including President George W. Bush and eight of the nine current members of the U.S. Supreme Court.