Graduate students and faculty members at New York University’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising are putting their research to public good in a new online journal of essays, articles, and opinion pieces.

The journal, Chronicling the Independent Sector: The Heyman Center’s Fundraising and Philanthropy Forum seeks to raise awareness of the study of philanthropy and promote discussion of effective fund-raising techniques.

“As our fund raisers and philanthropic leaders become better and more knowledgeable in the field, the promised outcome is a better America and a better global community,” write the journal’s co-editors in chief, Casey Rotter and Lauren Weston. “This online journal is a forum to the world and the greater philanthropic community as a whole.”

The journal’s inaugural issue features an essay on philanthropy and the media by William Josephson, the former assistant attorney general-in-charge of the New York State Law Department’s Charities Bureau, an interview with the veteran charity leader Frances Hesselbein, a student-written editorial on philanthropy’s relationship to immigration, and reviews of recent books on nonprofit management and wealth and economic theory. It also has a piece on grass-roots fund raising.

A second edition is planned for the first quarter of 2009.