Stephen Nill founded CharityChannel in 1992 as a means of connecting his nonprofit hospital chain's fund development staff over the Internet to their colleagues at other organizations. That first discussion community grew into what is today the oldest and largest community of third-sector professionals in the world, comprised of well over 150,000 participants worldwide.

He has been working in the US and international third sector for more than 30 years. He has served as the Chief Development Officer at a major Southern California university, the CEO of a large health care foundation, a vice-president of fund development of a U.S. west-coast nonprofit hospital chain, as a founder and acting director of development of a parochial school in his community, and as a founder of an organization dedicated to providing food and clothing for homeless persons in Southern California.

Mr. Nill is an attorney admitted to practice in California in 1981. His clients include some of the 100 wealthiest families in the United States as well as nonprofit organizations and educational institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK. He has conducted continuing education classes for lawyers on advanced topics in estate planning and taxation (including gift planning), tax-exempt organization law, and Internet law, for such organizations as the State Bar of California, the Western Conference on Tax Exempt Organizations, CEB, and others.

He received his Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles (1981), and his Bachelor of Arts degree in two majors, Communications and Political Science, from California State University, Fullerton (1978). He was selected as Executive Editor of the Daily Titan, the university's daily broadsheet newspaper.

Over the past nearly three decades, he has been a keynote or plenary speaker at most of the third-sector's professional organization international, national and regional conferences.

Mr. Nill is a frequent media source on nonprofit-organization issues, appearing on numerous broadcast news programs such as Fox News and CNN. He has been quoted in numerous print publications such as Fortune Magazine, London Times, New York Times, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nonprofit Times, etc.

Mr. Nill formerly served on the board of the Giving USA Foundation (also known as the AAFRC Trust for Philanthropy), which publishes the annual Giving USA report. He is a member of the advisory board of the National Philanthropic Trust. In 2005 he received the President's Award of the American Association of Grant Professionals.

Mr. Nill is a self-taught web site developer and programmer. As an amateur computer scientist, he has a particular interest in the application of quantum mechanics to computing. He is also a composer of symphonic music.

He has been happily married to his first wife continuously since 1978, has two beautiful grown daughters, and has an English springer and a golden retriever who think they're daughters numbers 3 and 4 -- and they are.