Welcome to our world—the world that nonprofits are, and will be inhabiting, for the next few years. This issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly has attempted not only to bring to the surface many of the contextual issues that may challenge us in the near future, but has also tried to suggest actions that we may all wish to take.

There are a number of jewels in this issue—articles that urge us to greater clarity in our purposes and values, and to greater influence in the future of this country. 

We have also, for the first time, included a Letters to the Editor section—there is a link between these two things. The letters are drawn from the overwhelming response to our May e-Newsletter, dealing with the general suppression of dissent and the associated threat to civil liberties—and the connection between that threat and the erosion of our right to exist as a sector, and as individual nonprofits.

We have reprinted that e-Newsletter here. We want to keep the conversation moving so we hope that you will chime in with your own reactions and thoughts about this piece as well as the other provocative articles in this issue. 

Finally, we are very pleased to host the first article to come out of the Governance Futures Project, sponsored by BoardSource and the Hauser Center for the Study of Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. It is also quite provocative, and we are proud that the Nonprofit Quarterly is being recognized as the publication-of-choice for moving new research into the domain of national discourse among nonprofits. It is also a nice lead into our fall issue, which will have governance as its feature topic.

We are, as always, very grateful to our authors for working with us as we attempt to treat complex ideas and situations in a way that is immediately relevant to you, our readers. And we are especially grateful to Jon Pratt, who filled in editorially for this issue as Ruth McCambridge spent a bit more time, as you also have probably had to do, on fund development.

Acknowledgements
We extend our thanks to the following foundations for their partnership in our work:
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Surdna Foundation.  We also thank our anonymous donor. You know who you are!