[Chapter-delegates] Participation in discussions was Membership or Mission?

[Paul Brooks]

On 29/03/2012 1:02 AM, David Vyorst wrote:
> +1
>
> A DC office would be nice as well. We currently use John's home address, and he's
> been rather lucky that no one has looked it up.
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 9:53 AM, David Solomonoff <president at isoc-ny.org
> <mailto:president at isoc-ny.org>> wrote:
>
>     Following on the issue of Chapter support ...
>
>     Even the New York Chapter is hampered by this. We have received some grant money
>     but our all-volunteer group has difficulty finding the time to both do the
>     projects and produce all the documentation - and we have Joly, a professional
>     videographer, as one of our most active members.
>
>     We have had offers of assistance (including financial) from local ISP's we
>     haven't been able to follow up on. Event space is a constant problem. After the
>     controversy about Paul Brigner's appointment I invited him to visit us and he
>     agreed - but I had to really hustle to get a space on short notice.
>
>     Despite the fact that it's possible to do so much online I think that the
>     Internet Society's credibility is hurt by not having a physical space in a city
>     like New York. I was recently talking to a NYC city council staffer about the
>     .nyc TLD - trying to find put what was happening with the application process. I
>     explained who we were and our mission - then he asked me where we were located.
>     When I told him we didn't have an office his tone immediately changed.
>

I can count on fingers the number of times we might have wanted to use a private
office in Sydney over the course of a year - certainly not worth office rental or the
excessive fees of a serviced office at this stage.

Function and event spaces are another matter, but we are fortunate to have a number of
organisational members who are very willing to provide us meeting rooms and function
spaces in their offices for the odd face-to-face board meeting, members functions and
seminars, for which they receive the exposure to the members attending, and our
acknowledgements and thanks at the microphone for their support. Being an official
not-for-profit organisation, I am often happily surprised by the level of no-cost
support we and other not-for-profits receive from legal and accounting firms as part
of their pro-bono support.

For a sensitive meeting like David describes, my first call is to our very
accommodating lawyers who usually have a meeting room free.


-- 
Paul Brooks
Treasurer
Internet Society of Australia
www.isoc-au.org.au

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