CivilSoc, our electronic newsletter or “listserv,” acts as a bulletin board and third sector news service for approximately 1,200 subscribers, of which roughly 70% are in the U.S., 15% are in post-Soviet countries and the rest are scattered across three continents. Since its founding in January 1995, CivilSoc has grown to become “the” online forum for news about developments affecting civil society in the former Soviet bloc. Many of our postings are evidently passed on to others on the Internet, as we repeatedly receive inquiries about items we have posted from people who are not CivilSoc subscribers.

Elena Topoleva, co-director of Agency for Social Development (ASI) and CCSI Advisor

We posted 429 announcements and news items to CivilSoc in 1997. Among our most popular innovations in 1997 was the addition to CivilSoc of translated excerpts from the weekly electronic bulletin of Agentsvo Sotsialnoi Informatsii (Social Information Agency) in Moscow. These translations were done by CCSI volunteers and interns Tom Sorenson, Michelle Fuqua and Alyssa Deutschler. At the end of the year we collected these translations into a new publication, The Russian Nonprofit Sector: 1997. Late in 1997 CCSI also entered into an agreement to provide a similar translation service for the Central Asian Sustainable Development Information Network (CASDIN), based in Almaty. (For full details on CivilSoc see our online FAQ: CivilSoc, CCSI’s Popular Listserv.)