Release Date: 11-01-2004

For information, contact:

Jeanne Ellinport
(202) 467-6163
jeanne@nonprofitpanel.org

(Washington, DC, November 1, 2004) — INDEPENDENT SECTOR today announced the formation of an eight-member Expert Advisory Group that will advise the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector IS created earlier this month.  The work of these experts will support the Panel, formed at the encouragement of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee to prepare recommendations for Congress on how to improve the oversight and governance of charitable organizations.

The advisory group includes some of America’s most knowledgeable scholars and practitioners in crucial aspects of nonprofit operations, such as government regulation, financial accountability, and tax policy.  Joel Fleishman, director of the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy, and the Professions at Duke University, and Marion Fremont-Smith, senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, will serve as co-conveners of the group. The Expert Advisory Group will inform the Panel’s work, as well as provide knowledge and perspectives on recommendations from several working groups that will also support the Panel.

The Panel on the Nonprofit Sector is part of a year-long focus on charitable organizations by the Senate Finance Committee in response to numerous reports in the media of ethical lapses in governance, fundraising, and other practices. Formed at the encouragement of Finance Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ranking Member Max Baucus (D-MT), the Panel is comprised of 24 nonprofit and philanthropic leaders from a wide spectrum of public charities and private foundations. The Finance Committee asked that the panel provide a report of its initial findings and recommendations by February 2005 and a final report in the spring of 2005.

In addition to co-conveners Mr. Fleishman and Mrs. Fremont-Smith, the members of the Expert Advisory Group are Victoria B. Bjorklund, head of the Exempt Organizations Group at the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Evelyn Brody, professor of law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology; William Josephson, former assistant attorney general-in-charge of the New York State Law Department’s Charities Bureau; Lester M. Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies; C. Eugene Steuerle, senior fellow at the Urban Institute; and Eugene R. Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. 

View the biographies (.pdf, 173 kb) of the Expert Advisory Group.

“The knowledge and experience of this stellar group of experts will contribute immeasurably to the effort to improve nonprofit governance and practice,” said Diana Aviv, IS president and CEO and executive director of the Panel. “Each member’s expertise will inform the Panel’s consideration of legislation, regulations, and practices that will shape the future operations of America’s charities and foundations.”