[Chapter-delegates] Accounting Accountability

Khaled Koubaa khaled.koubaa at gmail.com
Fri Apr 8 05:02:21 PDT 2016


I see ISOC is doing a work on Internet Future Scenarios. I think it is also
great if we can do the same work on ISOC Future itself.
ISOC organisation has not evolved since its inception in 1995 : org
members, individual members, chapters. As far as I know the only change
happened was creating the free-membership back in 2003( or 2004, I am not
sure ). We operate in very fast moving industry. A flat world. A member in
1995 is not the same in 2016.
We should do a self-assessment and answer question like : what is the role
of each type of members ? What if we remove those types ? What if we remove
chapters ? What is the role of regional bureaux ? Do we really need
chapters ? How ISOC will look like in 2020 ?  What governance model do we
want for our organisation in the future ? Do we want ISOC to be a bottom-up
organisation or a top-down one ?
Many question that we need to fix and answer now as they seems to return
back again again in the discussion each time in a different ways.


Khaled Koubaa
Twitter : @koubaak <https://twitter.com/koubaak>
LinkedIn : http://lnked.in/kkoubaa


2016-04-08 13:22 GMT+02:00 Veni Markovski <veni at veni.com>:

> Hi.
> If ISOC loses its tax exempt status, I don't why would this result in its
> liquidation. There are plenty of tax-exempt organizations that lose their
> status regularly. It can be obtained back, by the way.
>
> But this sounds also strange, as many tax-exempt foundations provide
> funding for projects overseas. ISOC Bulgaria has received funding through
> the years in the form of grants, we have also been part of European
> Framework programs, etc., and the accounting is part of what we do to be in
> compliance with the national laws.
>
> Some time ago we had a discussion on one of the lists, that with 100
> chapters, ISOC could easily provide $ 100,000 to each of them, on average,
> and that will only be $ 10 M from its budget. But it will empower the
> chapters around the world tremendously. Of course, some chapters are not
> ready to spend such an amount of money, but others can spend even more.
> Point is - when the chapters are the ones that are making ISOC a global
> organization, they have to be supported by the headquarters. Whether it's
> money, or staff support, or (we talked about it at some time, too) by
> providing them web hosting services at .isoc.org, or, or, or - the
> question is to have the desire. In some countries web hosting services are
> still expensive, so even something like that may be useful for the
> chapters.
>
> ISOC does amazing educational outreach, helps building IXPs, engages in
> public policy debates, etc., and it could - and should? - use the chapter
> better, and more. More, and better. We are all like one living organism,
> with different parts around the world, to keep them all in a harmony, is a
> coordination effort we all have to participate in. If we only think ISOC HQ
> should be the initiator of the coordination, that won't work well enough.
> The biggest challenge is the cross-cultural diversity, which we all have to
> keep in mind.
>
> Hope this is helpful.
>
>
> On 04/08/16 06:52, Eric Burger wrote:
>
> One of the major issues with disbursing funds is accounting and
> accountability. Get one of those wong and the Internet Society loses its
> tax exempt status. Losing its tax exempt status could result, in the
> extreme, in the liquidation of ISOC. At the worst, such an event, and the
> path to that event, would mean lots of lawyers getting rich and those of us
> in chapters getting nothing.
>
> Tax law is specific about banning individuals from enriching themselves
> from a non-profit. This is one of the structural reasons why non profit pay
> is so much less than private sector pay for the same job.
>
> A problem with simply paying block grants to chapters is if ANY chapter
> improperly spends the money, then ALL of ISOC is at risk.
>
> I am not saying ISOC should not be financially supporting Chapters. What I
> am saying is that if there is going to be some sort of funding model
> proposed, please also propose how the accountability mechanisms will work.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Best,
> Veni Markovskihttp://www.isoc.bg
>
>
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