Voluntary Organizations and Civil Society

Letter from the Editor

The International Journal
of Not-for-Profit Law

Volume 1, Issue 2, December 1998

Welcome to the second issue of IJNL! We are sorry that it has come a bit late, but we moved offices in December, which naturally occasioned a delay. Our new office address is 733 15th Street, NW, Suite 420, Washington, DC 20005, USA. Telephone, fax, and email remain the same.

We are delighted to announce that we are making a few changes and introducing a number of new features to IJNL–

  • In the future, we will be emailing only the Table of Contents to subscribers, with hyperlinks to the Web version of the Journal. Thus, you will receive a relatively short listing of what is in the Journal, from which you can easily access any article or story in which you are interested. We think this will eliminate the awkwardness of receiving the entire issue by email, while still giving you easy and quick access to anything you want to read. However, for those who do not have easy access to the Web, we are happy to email any items you may be interested in reading.
  • We are beginning to publish some articles in Spanish, and we hope to add articles in other languages. However, we will publish an English abstract of any article that is not published in English.
  • We are also adding the following new departments to the Journal:
    • An expanded Case Notes section, providing a discussion of recent new decisions of national and international courts;
    • A section addressing Legal Aspects of International Grantmaking;
    • A Point of View section; and
    • A new heading under country reports entitled “International Developments.”

In addition, we would like to introduce you to our Editorial Board, which is made up of many interesting scholars and practitioners from all over the world. As you can see from the Masthead, we have Regional Coordinating Editors, who are responsible for seeking articles and stories from various contributors. If you have something of interest that you would like to publish in the Journal, please email us at journal@icnl.org, and we will send you the email address of the coordinating editor for your region.

In the next issue we will be adding a “Letters to the Editors” feature, where you will have the opportunity to express your views on any issue relating to laws affecting NGOs. We invite you to submit letters commenting on articles or stories in the Journal or point of view columns.

Please be sure to email us with any questions or comments that you may have. As we said in our welcome letter in the last issue, our aim is to make the Journal a valuable resource for its readers. We can only do that if you give us feedback about your needs and wishes. We look forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,

Lee Irish (lirish@icnl.org)
Karla Simon (Ksimon@icnl.org

ABOUT ICNL:

ICNL is an international organization whose mission is to facilitate and support the development of civil society and the freedom of association on a global basis. ICNL, in cooperation with other international, national, and local organizations, provides technical assistance for the creation and improvement of laws and regulatory systems that permit, encourage, and regulate the NGO sector in countries around the world. ICNL maintains a documentation center for laws, regulations, self-regulatory materials, and other relevant documents, it provides relevant training and education, and it conducts research relevant to strengthening and improving laws for NGOs.

Funding for the establishment of IJNL has been generously provided by grants from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.  Report-writing for several of the reports in the Journal has been supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank.

CAVEAT:

The country reports, articles, and other items in the Journal have been prepared and reviewed with care. They have been contributed by many people. Although every effort has been made to assure that the information is correct, there can be no assurance that every item is accurate. No item in the Journal should be relied upon for legal purposes. Any person needing legal assistance should consult a lawyer licensed to practice in the relevant jurisdiction. If anyone discovers errors in the Journal, please let us know.