[Chapter-delegates] ISOC's regional engagement

[Frédéric Taes]

Dear Vint,

 

Thank you very much for this clear explanation of financial requirements for ISOC. Below some personal ideas as input, based on System Dynamics and Delta Model, both from MIT.

 

There are some non-working scenarios, like asking member fees: this would lead most active unpaid volunteers, working at their own costs, to leave ISOC if we ask them money, starting a vicious circle (less activities, more members leaving, less revenues, less activities,…).

 

>From a strategic point of view, Internet Society could turn into a service organization model: at the service of Humanity, including by selling services.

CS-IEEE and ACM are partly doing that: most members are not active volunteers but passive consumers, paying access to Digital Library, books, content and services.

 

We have an excellent base to build services, getting data and selling data: Internet Society Pulse, MANRS Observatory, Internet Poverty Index, Learning,…

We should federate all this data and knowledge and building an “ Internet Society Knowledge Base ”, also enriched by outcome from chapters, as isTrust.

 

Base model = “fremium”: basic access for free, advanced services in return of payment, or work for volunteers, or data from operators, or visibility for media partners,….

That way we can build an ecosystem around, which can involve chapters as local presence, including to get local data (conducting surveys is an excellent way to get in touch).

 

We should also go back to Internet Society fundamentals, as addressing the most important global issues related to the Internet, and not (only) the technical ones:* people are ready to support widows and orphans, not something abstract.

 

When a stakeholder (government, organization, press…) would like to have accurate information or data about Internet, Internet Society would become the reference.

We could even start then to sell consultancy services, just like Gartner is doing.

Many sustainable non-profit organizations are selling services (Red Cross to name one). Why not Internet Society?

 

Best Regards,

Frederic Taes.

 

(*): https://www.internetsociety.be/why-internet-society/ and https://www.internetsociety.org/news/speeches/2011/the-internet-is-for-everyone/

https://www.istrust.org/teaser/teaser-v0.8.mp4

 

De : Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org> au nom de vinton cerf via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
Répondre à : vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com>
Date : mercredi 20 septembre 2023 à 13:53
À : Olivier Crepin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
Cc : Chapter Delegates <Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
Objet : Re: [Chapter-delegates] ISOC's regional engagement

 

Olivier, et al,

to maintain 501(c)(3) status in the US (ie tax credit for donors to the organization), ISOC has to show broad support from the public. The significant income from PIR operations cannot be fully transferred to ISOC without overwhelming the requirement that 33 1/3 % of income to ISOC must come from "public" sources which can include private and corporate donors. If ISOC receives more than 2/3 of its operating income from PIR, it puts the public charity status of ISOC at risk. If not all of the net income of PIR can go to ISOC, it ends up in a fund accumulating at PIR which can be spent only on other 501(c)(3) entities but not on ISOC because of the public support statistics. There is another 10% threshold that can work temporarily (more details), but this is not a permanent solution. The only solution is to raise more public funding. I think ISOC might find it helpful to explain this in its web pages to dispel the misunderstanding that the .org/PIR income solves all problems for ISOC.

 

 

Andrew, please correct me if I have misstated this. 

 

v

 

 

On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 5:50 AM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

Dear Andrew,

On 15/09/2023 19:59, Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates wrote:

Our income is not keeping up with our expenses and we have not been able to attract the level of public support that we need to do, and there isn't anything else left to cut, so we had to make a difficult decision about where to retrench.


Thank you for your explanatory note. Always sad to see people go. One thing that caught my eye was the above sentence which contains some ambiguities. Would you please be so kind to flesh this out? I just do not want to misinterpret the first part of the sentence relating to income and public support.

Kindest regards,

Olivier Crépin-Leblond
UK England Chapter

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