[Chapter-delegates] Notification: Individual Donation campaign

Tue Nov 14 04:59:19 PST 2017

Todd:

ISOC should start to apply to itself the same multi-stakeholder mechanisms
that it so much promotes around the world. The Chapter Advisory Council is
one of those mechanisms. Use it.

My recommendation going forward is to send a request for advice to the ChAC
Steering Committee and let the ball roll there. This will give ISOC the
chapter's insights and ideas on how to move ahead with this program. Even
if the final ChAC advice is not 100% acceptable, at least all chapters will
be aware of the program and consulted previous to launching it.

Reactions like you got from ISOC San Francisco and others (like ours) are
an indication of how ISOC is still disconnected from its chapters.

-ed

ISOC-PR

On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 4:47 AM Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:

> Hi Todd,
>
>> T
>>
> his campaign is the first in a long while from the Internet Society, it
>> used to be a common practice and ISOC has raised money from individuals
>> before. We haven’t done so in the last few years for several reasons, but
>> mostly because we felt that our processes and mechanisms were not
>> professional enough.
>>
>>
> No, it wasn't all about processes. The creation of a chapter in Canada
> was originally started after the 1997 INET meeting in Montreal, but was
> cancelled because of an inability to reach agreement on
> revenue/solicitation sharing between HQ and Chapters (this was before the
> PIR windfall). As a result, there was no Canada chapter until a reboot
> effort started a few years ago. Some of the people involved in that
> original effort are on the Canada Chapter board now so they know the
> history.
>
> Broadly, the concept of ISOC fundraising from members independently from
> Chapters is not new, and has been controversial when it occurred in the
> past. Perhaps the plan's designers might have encountered more of this
> information and institutional memory, had Chapters been consulted in the
> planning stages rather than after everything was finalized.
>
>
>> Our reasons for doing this now are in line with our position as a global
>> non-profit organization including diversity of our funding sources, which
>> has been a stated goal of ISOC for years; to strengthen the mid and long
>> term financial sustainability of the organization. And secondly, to
>> maintain and strengthen the status as a non-profit organization that needs
>> to meet certain rules of revenue sources.
>>
>
> Section 2 of the ISOC bylaws state that its two advisory committees exist
> "*for the purpose of providing information and advice to the Board of
> Trustees and the President of the Internet Society on matters of strategic
> importance*". The whole reason some of us worked so hard to create a
> Chapters Advisory Council was to establish an appropriate bi-directional
> channel that would inform HQ about local sensibilities while then working
> together in international initiatives.
>  Think global, act local.
>
>
> Surely a tax-status-related crisis of income diversity qualifies as
> 'strategic importance'. Why was the Chapters Advisory Council not asked for
> advice on this as the Bylaws explicitly indicate? Who made the call that
> this issue was not sufficiently strategic to consult Chapters in advance?
>
> Had the ChAC been approached by staff and told "we need to diversify
> revenue sources from our community", you may have discovered a breadth of
> innovative approaches. The discussion of whether it is reasonable to have a
> nominal fee for ISOC membership may have proven useful. Or you may have
> come to the exact same conclusion as you have now, but this time with
> Chapters as enthusiastic allies rather than potential competitors for the
> same sustaining funding.
>
> Consider the fundraising model used by American public broadcasting.
> Consider that PBS doesn't do any membership or individual fundraising
> campaigns without the close collaboration of WETA, its local partner in
> Washington. Having parallel national and local campaigns could be a
> disaster.
>
>> It is not the intent of this campaign to divert attention from the
>> chapters or try to confuse the recipient at all.
>>
> As you know -- or at least know by now -- there are Chapters that charge
> for membership, and some that do their own
> financial 
> solicitations of members based on
> local
>  initiatives.
> Starting
>  a
> solicitation 
> program now will catch them off
> -
> guard and with very little time to determine how to work (or cope) with
> it. How can
> anyone
>  state definitively that these initiatives will not be confusing or
> competitive without having reached out to these Chapters -- either
> individually or through the Council?
>
>> I believe the message will touch on the breadth and depth of what the
>> community does in the world and that obviously includes the work in the
>> chapters. Both messages will go out on our standard mailer format which has
>> been used to this list for the entirety of 2017.
>>
> At worst, this is a potential for direct conflict with some Chapters.
>
> At best, this is a missed opportunity to let the Chapters Advisory Council
> fulfill its Bylaw role as an integral part of the ISOC decision-making
> process. ISOC can't be a trusted advocate for multi-stakeholder approaches
> to Internet governance when it ignores its own internal multi-stakeholder
> structures. There is a further missed opportunity in that shutting Chapters
> out of the campaign architecture reduces the potential for a network of
> local champions once the donation campaigns are launched.
>
> To use a tennis metaphor, this is an unforced error. Not too late to fix.
>
> --
> Evan Leibovitch
> Toronto, Canada
>
> Em: evan at telly dot org
> Sk: evanleibovitch
> Tw: el56
>
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