[Chapter-delegates] Day-to-day funding

Tue Mar 12 08:53:12 PDT 2013

Hi Elver, and others who have been participating in this  very interesting
conversation

I totally empathise with the difficulties that we all share with regards to
managing our Chapters voluntarily. In the Pacific we too have found it
difficult to ask our members to pay fees, especially when we know that we
can't do as much for them as we would like. Our Board has been discussing
how we might be able to access members who live in countries at the north of
our Pacific region - places that I have never been to  but with PICISOC
members who have been on our list for years in the belief that we can help
to make a difference with regards to advancing the internet in their part of
our region. At times I wonder about our effectiveness as a regional
organisation. We need to do more, but funding is always the issue.

ISOC provides community grants and event funding, but not normally for
things as mundane as chapter management or getting out to meet members face
to face and to actually discuss what their issues might be.  We have members
who have been on our list for years, and never personally met anyone from
the PICISOC Board, let alone ISOC.. All our communication with the majority
of our members is online through our email list. 

Oh, to be able to hold a restaurant fundraiser as you suggest, Elver.. There
are 800 members in our Chapter, and 15 of them live in my country, the Cook
Islands. Somehow I don't  think our efforts would take us far. Every year
the PICISOC Board whose members live in 6 different countries, have to seek
funding from ISOC and other regional partners to attend our own regional
INET. Its embarrassing, but we have to do it in order to face our members
and listen to their issues and then try to do something about them. As you
say, we too are deadlocked through lack of funds.  

In a way, it is comforting to know that we are not alone in this boat (to
use an oceanic analogy) and that we are all sharing similar difficulties
within our own different situations. What we can do however is to continue
to take the issues affecting our regions to ISOC and to ICANN meetings
through the opportunities that both organisations provide for members to
attend face to face meetings with ISOC.. I would suggest that the ISOC
meeting in Beijing should include this topic on its agenda, so that we can
discuss something on a more practical level and to hopefully return to our
chapters with something substantial. I know we don't normally get much time
at these meetings, but ISOC should be able to give us some feedback (that we
can debate) on how they view our situations and how they can assist us to be
more effective in our regions.

I look forward to seeing you in Beijing.

Maureen
Pacific Islands Chapter

-----Original Message-----
From: chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org
[mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Elver Loho
Sent: Tuesday, 12 March 2013 3:56 a.m.
To: Ernesto cruz
Cc: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Day-to-day funding

Hi all,

I thank you all for your feedback on this issue -- please keep your ideas
and insights coming! Who knows. We might be able to solve this problem after
all.

Last night I was taking a break from doing some freelance software
development for a client (who, thankfully, always pays on time), and came
across a TEDtalk, which offered a unique and mindblowing perspective on the
whole issue of NGO funding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfAzi6D5FpM

And it made me think... What if ISOC just gave every chapter every year (or
more often) $1k to be used solely for fundraising and advertising? Looking
at just the Estonia Chapter, I think we could do quite a lot simply by:
- Spending a few hundred on Facebook ads over the year. (I've been itching
to try this out, but spending donations on Facebook ads would look immoral
to way too many people, even though it would probably pay off in a few
months.)
- Printing informative booklets, stickers, pins, business cards,
distributing them.
- Paying transportation costs to go speak about issues at schools and
universities all over the country, not just the few larger cities.
- Organising a fundraiser event at a restaurant with a few speeches and some
well-known guests.

This could be one of those grants where you just write a one page summary of
how you plan to use the money and when the money runs out, you send back a
one page summary of how it was used and what the effects were. This way ISOC
global could also get feedback on which fundraising and advertising
strategies work in different parts of the world, and then use this data to
advise chapters on how to raise money. To make them self-sufficient. With a
small amount of seed capital, global distributed experimentation, and a
centralised analysis of the results. And we could also trade tips on this
mailing list.

What do you all think of something like this?

Best,
Elver Loho
Vice Chair
Estonia Chapter

elver.loho at gmail.com
+372 5661 6933
skype: elver.loho

On 12 March 2013 15:08, Ernesto cruz <ernesto at onelinkpr.net> wrote:
> Well said, Veni...+1
>
> Best regards from Puerto Rico,
>
> Ernesto
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Mar 11, 2013, at 4:44 PM, Veni Markovski <veni at veni.com> wrote:
>
> The best sustainable way would be for ISOC to go back to the origins 
> of its bid for getting the .org domain.
> Back then the broad public was told that no money from .org would go 
> to cover expenses of ISOC. Currently the situation is quite different.
> If there are 100 chapters, I would strongly argue that ISOC could 
> allocate
> 20 % of its budget to fund them - through grants, projects, etc.
> No matter how we look at that - as investment, or as grant, or as 
> sponsorship, it will have a tremendous impact on the Internet, and the 
> way it is being developed around the globe.
> Just think for a moment what a chapter in Africa, Asia, Eastern 
> Europe, or Latin America can do with about $ 100,000 / year.
> It will:
> - empower its active membership;
> - allow it to organize tutorials, workshop, seminars to educate 
> national parliaments, governments, etc. on Internet-related issues;
> - keep a whole office operational;
> - allow chapter to provide small travel and educational grants to 
> active community/chapter members;
> - provide the means for hiring good legal experts to help telecom 
> ministry formulate proper policies in the field of ICT;
> - organize local awards for web creativity;
> - support localization of Creative Commons licenses;
> - allow young engineers to go to IETF meetings;
> - ensure Internet connectivity for the chapter and its members;
> - etc., etc., etc....
>
>
> On 03/11/2013 16:35, Edwin A. Opare wrote:
>
> Elver,
>
> Well said.
>
> Any ideas, thoughts or suggestions on chapter sustainability 
> especially when membership dues are not coming through and a chapter 
> does not have any corporate members and their relating support on board?
>
> Edwin Opare
>
> Ghana Chapter
>
>
>
> --
>
> Best,
> Veni Markovski
> http://www.veni.com
> https://www.facebook.com/venimarkovski
> https://twitter.com/veni
>
> The opinions expressed above are those of the author, not of any 
> organizations, associated with or related to him in any given way.
>
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