[Chapter-delegates] Day-to-day funding

[David Solomonoff]

** apologize for any duplicate posting **

An ongoing concern for the NYC Chapter -  and for me personally as my 
day job will be ending in a year due to a combination of office politics 
and downsizing of public universities and medical facilities in NY.

I work in an IT capacity so I sometimes can get professional leave for 
ISOC-related activities. I think a lot of the most active volunteers 
have day jobs closely related to the ISOC mission so they can get at 
least some time off, travel expenses, etc. for their volunteer efforts.

The problem here is twofold:

 1. We (thinking of the NY Chapter but I'm sure other Chapters as well)
    still don't have enough active members to cover every aspect of the
    ISOC mission. More collaboration between Chapters on regional and
    global issues would allow for pooling of resources, a more unified
    voice and less reinventing the wheel.
 2. We aren't making an effective outreach beyond the immediate tech
    community. Even the startup community in NYC tends to take Net
    access for granted and doesn't give much thought to how public
    policy decisions affects them. And many people who are politically
    active and fairly tech saavy have no interest or understanding of
    the issues we're concerned about.

We're caught in a situation where it's hard to do stuff, recruit 
volunteers and do all appropriate publicity, documentation and 
record-keeping. One aspect is always going to get short-changed. Happily 
I think we make the right choice and focus on making things happen.

But we need to have a much higher public profile. This requires paid, 
full-time staff who can recruit and mentor volunteers who in turn may 
eventually wish to make a full-time commitment.

I understand that this is currently beyond the financial (and current 
staff) resources of the global organization. In addition, the Chapters 
are closer to the ground in terms of local issues and concerns so they 
can do this better if they have more direct control of resources.

What I'd like to see - and this hasn't happened yet - is for the global 
development team to work with Chapters to find new sources of funding. 
I'm sure there are a lot of creative ways to do this I haven't thought of.

On 03/11/2013 10:48 AM, Elver Loho wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Dealing with everyday chapter issues takes a lot of time and effort.
> Last week I was sitting on the council of the Data Protection
> Inspectorate discussing legislation regarding personal data. Today I
> was at the parliament's constitutional commission discussing Open Data
> implementation. Preparing for these meetings, taking part, and later
> reporting to the board and members takes a full day's work for each
> event. And we haven't yet figured out how to fund such activities.
>
> Can anyone shed some light on how day-to-day funding has been resolved
> at your chapter?
>
> I'd like to hear about workable funding models, which would let us
> keep 2-3 salaried positions. Running all of this for no salary for
> over two years has been highly successful (NGO of the year 2012,
> prevented ACTA from being signed, biggest peaceful public protest in
> the country's history, helped create the best law of 2012 bringing
> Open Data into Estonian legislation, etc.), but I'm also broke right
> now and have no medical insurance, so, yeah... It's probably not a
> sustainable model of getting things done. And donations simply don't
> work in a small country like Estonia.
>
> Best,
> Elver Loho
> Estonia Chapter
>
> elver.loho at gmail.com
> +372 5661 6933
> skype: elver.loho
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>


-- 
David Solomonoff, President
Internet Society of New York
president at isoc-ny.org
isoc-ny.org

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