<div dir="auto">Dear Chris,</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Happy New Year 2025(belated),</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I hear you loud and clear. Crowd -in more funding to support Chapters to deliver a significant and high impact project locally has been long overdue! Now this has got a captain in Sally as CEO and the Lieutenants like you Chris. I thank the current ISOC leadership for moving away from the philosophy of having ISOC Chapters as mere local digital clubs instead of actual organization! </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I will submit that each active chapter needs an intentional one BIG grant </div><div dir="auto">and the impact will reverberate many years in the future. Although you have called it <div dir="auto"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'-apple-system','helveticaneue';font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;display:inline!important;float:none">“an ambitious strategy to crowd-in funding from other donors to increase the support funding…”. This should be,“must be” a premium strategy of ISOC going forward if high local impact is anything to go by. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'-apple-system','helveticaneue';font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;display:inline!important;float:none"><br></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'-apple-system','helveticaneue';font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;display:inline!important;float:none">I will state why I think it should be a premium strategy. Internet Society is a big and reputable name worldwide and from this reputation comes a a huge latent strength and ability to bring donors,philanthropists and philanthropic organisations on the table to negotiate for donations based on the actual work done locally by the network of chapters</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'-apple-system','helveticaneue';font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;display:inline!important;float:none"><br></span></div><div dir="auto">I prophesy that with your new signature work of bringing donors with local chapters that have done an actual ongoing project that donors can see its impact NOT a conference or event will surely bring in more funding for local projects more than previously imagined. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I wish you the best of energy in this new noble work. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Dr. Nazar Nicholas </div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 10:48 Christopher Locke via Chapter-delegates <<a href="mailto:chapter-delegates@elists.isoc.org">chapter-delegates@elists.isoc.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi everyone.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I just wanted to send a quick ‘kudos’ email of thanks out to Alphonce and the Kenya Chapter team and Adarsh & Rajan at the Bengaluru chapters for meeting with me and others on my recent trips. We are beginning an ambitious strategy to
crowd-in funding from other donors to increase the support we can give in grant funding over the next five years, and in both cases I was well supported by the local chapters in these meetings.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">In Nairobi Alphonce and his team joined me and ISOC staff at a lunch with the local Mastercard Foundation team, where we discussed how our work on community connectivity and training provides essential support to bringing people into a
safe, secure and reliable internet. In Bengaluru Adarsh & Rajan joined me at a dinner with local ISOC staff and an august group including Reeta Roy (President of the Mastercard Foundation), James Mwangi (CEO of Equity Bank Kenya) and Patrick Awuah (Founder
& Principle at Ashesi University Ghana). Adarsh & Rajan presented and chatted to the group about their work and how ISOC chapters support training and connectivity, and how global efforts such as the Rural SIG support the goals of foundations such as the
Mastercard Foundation and Equity Bank.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">There is a power in getting our chapters and community into these meetings with potential partners and donors. The real power of what we do comes from partners hearing this first hand from our community. It’s been fantastic to get the
support of Aphonce, Adarsh and their teams as we do this, and it’s something we will continue to do as we build our co-funding coalitions. I will talk more about this on the future Chapter Advisory calls and am very happy to do other calls dedicated to explaining
our approach and how Chapters can support and get involved on other calls if desired. We’re still in the development stage but I hope in 2025 working together we can create partnerships that will support a lot of our work over the next five years.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I’ll be in Ethiopia this week at the Internet Development Conference meeting more Chapters, as Sally and I will continue to do as we travel, not just drawing you into meetings for your support, but also listening to you to understand how
we can work better together. 2025 is shaping up to be an exciting and productive year for us all, and I want to thank those Chapters who have already taken the time to meet and work with us, and I look forward to doing more of this throughout the year.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Best, Chris.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.5pt"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:black">Chris Locke,</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:black"> EVP
& MD of Internet Society Foundation<br>
</span><a href="mailto:locke@isocfoundation.org" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#0078d7">locke@isocfoundation.org</span></a><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:black"> | Time
zone: UTC -0 | Pronouns: he/him/his<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.5pt"><span style="color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.5pt"><a href="https://bit.ly/3nUsQmJ" title="https://bit.ly/3nUsQmJ" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#183247">Donate today.</span></a><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:black"> Help
protect the Internet for everyone.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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