Leaders of organizations representing tens of thousands of American nonprofit organizations have signed on to a declaration--"Forward Together"--stating that "one million charities are ready to help"--and how--in these challenging times. This unprecedented attempt to mobilize thousands of nonprofit organizations across the country is calling on the nation's governments and businesses to join with its "citizen sector" toward finding effective ways to address increasing challenges in tough economic times.

The initiative is an attempt to bring together an array of groups representing the breadth and diversity of the nonprofit sector around a common agenda, specifically, ensuring that the citizen sector is no longer overlooked as a crucial partner in solving the country's deepening problems. An advertisement about this effort will appear in the next issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. 
 
To maximize the attention this document receives, here are some of the steps that you could take:

• Post the full “Forward Together” declaration on your organization’s website, perhaps with a short introductory note from yourself inviting interested persons to go to the following website to sign on themselves: www.jhu.edu/listeningpost/forward.
• Send out an email message informing your members or colleagues that you have signed this document and urging them to join you.
  
• Cite this Declaration in speaking engagements and newsletters of your organization and in communications you have with policy-makers and others, emphasizing its importance in calling attention to the significant role of nonprofit organizations at this critical time in our country’s history and the support the nonprofit sector needs in order to make the contributions of which it is capable.
  
• Share the steps you have been able to take and what uses you have been able to make of this document listeningpostproject@jhu.edu for others to see.