[Chapter-delegates] Notification: Individual Donation campaign

[Saul Stein]

Hi

I see that this campaign is continuing…



I have just received another email this month (Help Shape tomorrow) asking 
for donations. The unsubscribe doesn’t give me the option of only opting out 
of only donation based email…



If every email we receive is going to be about asking for money, I can 
assure you that membership will drop (or email will just be filtered). The 
link that one is asked to click on, isn’t even encrypted :(

The unsubscribe option on the email also doesn’t work (or I can’t understand 
how to work it) as one is not able to check/uncheck subscription options…



My 2c…

Saul









From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] 
On Behalf Of Todd M. Tolbert
Sent: 14 November 2017 04:33 PM
To: Eduardo Diaz <eduardodiazrivera at gmail.com>
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 
<mailto: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 
<mailto:evan at telly.org> > wrote:

Hi Todd,

​This 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/solicitationsharing 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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