[Chapter-delegates] Notification: Individual Donation campaign

Tue Nov 14 23:51:00 PST 2017

Dear Todd,

I will add this item to the agenda of the next meeting of the Chapters Advisory Council Steering Committee.

Best,

Richard

From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Todd M. Tolbert
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2017 15:33
To: Eduardo Diaz
Cc: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Notification: Individual Donation campaign

Chapter Leaders,

I appreciate this comment and all the others. They are not falling on deaf ears, I promise.

I have postponed the campaign for now. I am interested now from this group, what the next steps would be to get to a point where we can come to an agreement that this test (in some form) should be run and attempted, with the support of the chapters.

I believe there is a Steering Committee meeting on Monday the 20th. I believe I return from my travels around the time that meeting is happening, so I will do everything in my power to be on the call.

Thank You, 

Todd

On Nov 14, 2017, at 7:59 AM, Eduardo Diaz <eduardodiazrivera at gmail.com> wrote:

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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