The confluence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with the development of China's education is not a mere chance encounter. On August 27, 2004, the author took part in the designing of a meeting held in Beijing by the Twenty First Century Education Salon that received support from the Ford Foundation. Jointly organized by the Twenty-first Century Educational Development Research Institute and the Education Weekly of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference Journal, the Salon took as its main topic "NGOs and the Development of Chinese Education." Participants at the meeting said that this was the first symposium held in China that linked NGOs with the development of China's education. This gathering provided people with two revelations: (1) Voluntarism and NGOs hold enormous significance for China's education. However, the attention given in all quarters--from the government to academic circles and including people who study and formulate policies to the development of NGOs in education--is obviously quite inadequate; and (2) Education has always been a field in which NGOs can play a major role, and as far as NGO people participating in education or NGO people who intend to engage in educational practice are concerned, each party will find that the other possesses profound learning and fairly high professional thresholds. By tracing the footsteps and pronouncements of NGOs active in the educational field in 2004, the author hopes to share some general information about the existence and development of these NGOs and offer some understanding of their tentative efforts in terms of China's education and future trends of development in related fields.