[Chapter-delegates] 2% for Stronger Chapters: Making real the board goal
Dave Burstein
daveb at dslprime.com
Tue Apr 23 19:22:09 PDT 2013
Folks
Great to see the board wants stronger chapters
"Board re-affirmed that the Internet Society is a mission-driven
organization, and addressed the strategic role of Chapters in the
achievement of the ISOC mission. As a follow-up to this meeting, the Board
agreed that Chapters are vital to advancing the mission, principles, and
values of ISOC at the local and regional levels and they contribute to
ensuring the organization is globally and locally engaged. The Board was
sympathetic to requests by Chapters for support in their essential
operations,"
Let's make this real by shifting 2% of the budget ($500,000) to the
chapters immediately, enough to give each chapter that applies $5-10,000
over the next 12 months. It won't transform the chapters, but is enough for
20-40 hr/month admin and/or several events with $1,000 budget and/or
economy travle for 1 or 2 members to a major meeting.
It's almost certainly a more efficient use of funds than hiring
expensive people in DC or Geneva and flying them around the world.
This is a "just do it" proposal to reinforce the bottom-up,
multistakeholder model in the Internet Society itself.
We have professional management that certainly can rearrange 2% of the
budget. There's an obvious source in not filling two positions currently
open on the website: one's for an economist with strong experience in
fundraising http://www.internetsociety.org/jobs/senior-economist and the
second a newly created position for a marketing communications manager.
http://www.internetsociety.org/jobs/marketing-communications-manager .
There's presumably ~$400-500K in the budget for those postions and related
expenses. There are several other open positions with six figure salaries
and expenses where the money could be more effectively spent on local
programs.
We all know that most funds that can be raised in our field come with
serious strings attached; the last thing an ISOC economist or any policy
person should be doing is begging interested parties for money. That job
should never have been created because of the obvious influence on the
policy proposed. ISOC is already fighting back against claims we're unduly
influenced by multinational corporations and positions; tying policy so
closely to fundraising just provides ammunition to such attacks.
And while it might be valuable "to develop, manage, edit and review
existing collateral for marketing effectiveness and adherence to brand
guidelines" we already have some hard-working professionals doing that. The
money would be much better spent bythe chapters working directly in the
field, I believe.
Going forward, I'd bet shifting 10-20% of the ISOC budget to local
efforts will result in far more impact than spending the money as we now
do, but that will take time to organize.
I hope chapter leaders will rise up with proposals how to make this
happen and that the center can see the wisdom of being a less "top-down"
group.
Dave Burstein
We've got experienced senior managers who
--
Editor, DSL Prime, Fast Net News, Net Policy News and A Wireless Cloud
Author with Jennie Bourne DSL (Wiley, 2002) and Web Video: Making It
Great, Getting It Noticed (Peachpit, 2008)
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