[Chapter-delegates] What should ISOC's future goals be? How can we work toward achieving them as ISOC Chapters?

[Veni Markovski]

Andrew,
One piece that needs to be put in perspective - you are using the word 
"lobbying", and need to say that it has different meaning in different 
countries, and while some countries have laws, regulating lobbying 
governmental officials, Congress, etc., (e.g. the USA), other don't 
(e.g. Bulgaria). So, conclusions, based on the US experience, won't 
necessarily be valid in Bulgaria and vice versa.
Likewise, we can't talk about "the chapters"; some chapters are active, 
and others are not. Some talk to politicians, other don't. Some are 
small, others - big. Some have stuff, others don't. Some chapters "guard 
their independent status pretty jealously", and others don't care what 
the status is, as long as the job is done, the Internet in their country 
is not under threat or control, etc.

And another observation - at least for me this conversation sounds as if 
we already have had it. Maybe 5, maybe 10 or 15 years ago - I don't 
remember. But I do remember discussing the %subject of George and 
Muhammad's email several times, including when I was on the Board of 
Trustees, and I volunteered to come with some written ideas to the 
staff. It was, if I am not mistaken, during the Minneapolis BoT meeting; 
and the other volunteers were Alan, Don and George. Maybe I am missing 
someone. In any case, none of our suggestions were used by the 
organization, which is a pity, as it would have solved a lot of the 
issues ISOC had to confront in the years after that. So, if people don't 
respond to the current thread, it might be that they don't want to spend 
the time over and over again?

v/

On 9/21/21 18:37, Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 09:27:05PM +0000, Franca Palazzo wrote:
>> Whatever the decision as to goals, there should be a bucket for 
>> Chapters' to use for issues that are specific to their 
>> jurisdictions.  These can't be anticipated a year in advance.  In 
>> many cases, we are reacting to whatever crazy legislation proposals 
>> the current gov't tables.  In order to influence policy we need funds 
>> to hold events that promote the consultations and submissions done by 
>> our policy committee.
>>
>
> I understand and sympathise with this suggestion, but it would 
> actually be quite dangerous for the Internet Society and possibly for 
> certain chapters, for two reasons:
>
> 1.  Actively funding what might qualify as lobbying campaigns under US 
> law would endanger the Internet Society's charitable status.  US 
> charities are tightly constrained as to what lobbying activities they 
> can engage in, and we can't just have a pool of money that is 
> generally open for funding such issues.  (This is in no way to 
> minimise the importance of chapters reacting to legislation -- in the 
> recent Canadian case, indeed "crazy", in my opinion.)  The penalties 
> for messing this up are pretty serious, up to and including revocation 
> of public charity status, and we just cannot possibly allow that to 
> happen.  (For instance, if we were to lose our public charity status, 
> all of our supporting organizations, including PIR, would 
> automatically be affected. PIR's legal status has implications for its 
> contract with ICANN, so this is not a small matter.  In addition, if 
> we lost our charity status that would immediately affect the IETF, 
> which would also be bad.)
>
> 2.  Chapters are legally separate organizations, and if they are 
> automatically eligible for funding for their political (not 
> necessarily "lobbying", note) activities this could affect either the 
> legal reality or the perception of that independence.  From the 
> Internet Society point of view, of course, this might not be so bad, 
> but I have always had the impression that chapters guard their 
> independent status pretty jealously; so we would not wish to do 
> anything to impugn that.
>
> With my CEO hat on, I will say that the first of these is more 
> important to me as a corporate officer; but it's certainly not 
> something that is trivial to work around.  Some other organizations 
> set up other kinds of affiliated entities that are designed to do 
> lobbying (but that have very different rules related to how they are 
> funded).  It might be useful for chapter leaders to express to the 
> board how they might feel about such an arrangement.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>

-- 

Best regards,
Veni
https://www.veni.com
pgp:5BA1366Eveni at veni.com

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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