Independent Sector announced the formation of an eight-member Expert Advisory Group that will advise the "Panel on the Nonprofit Sector" formed in response to a request by the Finance Committee to make recommendations to Congress to improve the oversight and governance of charitable organizations. The Expert Advisory Group will provide knowledge and support to the Panel on such issues as government regulation, financial accountability, and tax policy. They will also provide perspective on recommendations from the working groups that will also support the panel. 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. Additional members are Victoria B. Bjorkland, head of the Exempt Organizations Group at the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Barlett; 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. The advisory group is expected to be one of two advisory groups that will be established to assist the Independent Sector Panel address governance and oversight issues affecting nonprofit organizations. Independent Sector also plans to announce work groups in the near future that will play a central role in the process of developing recommendations for the Senate Finance Committee. For more information on the Independent Sector Panel