[Chapter-delegates] ISOC's regional engagement

[vinton cerf]

Thanks to Andrew for precision and transparency regarding the regulated
constraints on ISOC's ability to claim public support for its work
consonant with its 501(c)(3) designation. That designation allows donors
subject to US income taxes to deduct their contributions from income and
thus reduce their income tax. Some international organizations like ISOC
also open up charity arms in other countries so as to extend the tax break
concept to other donors in other countries. Of course, tax laws vary pretty
dramatically from country to country. I am a donor to some UK charities who
maintain US branches for exactly this purpose. While we should not expect
our members and supporters to fully understand US tax law, they should
understand that because the bulk of the income to ISOC comes from its US
subsidiary, PIR, the significant burden of financial requirements stems
from US tax regulations. Andrew's calculation of $13M required to meet the
minimum public support metric (1/3 of income) is the target and
historically has been a challenge to raise because of assumptions that all
of the PIR revenue is available to ISOC for support.

It might be good to put something on a "donate" web page that explains this
dilemma in answer to the question "why should I donate to ISOC?"

$13M is a not inconsiderable sum of money and ISOC does need to adapt its
structure to create incentive for donations coming from outside the US, for
example.

Vint


On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 12:23 PM Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Hi Veni,
>
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 08:10:10AM -0400, Veni Markovski via
> Chapter-delegates wrote:
>
> >Our proposal was not implemented, and it seems not much has been done
> >since, if the lack of public support has resulted in letting so many
> >people go.
>
> I cannot speak about the proposal you made in the past, but I think it is
> simply false (and not a little dismissive of you to say) that "not much has
> been done since."  It took the Internet Society a long time to build this
> situation, and it will take a lot of work and time to get out of it.  I am
> certainly unhappy that we have not made as much progress as I would like,
> but we will continue our focus on improving this situation.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan, President & CEO, Internet Society
> e:sullivan at isoc.org m:+1 416 731 1261
> Help protect the Internet for everyone:
> https://www.internetsociety.org/donate/
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