[council] Re: Matching funds

["J.Scott Evans" <jse@adamspat.com>]

Philip:

While this news is certainly disappointing, does this really have any 
immediate affect on the DNSO budget?  In addition, how are we doing on 
getting deliquent constituencies to pay their past due commitments?  I think 
Stuart's comments on the funding of the ICANN process are to be taken to 
heart and I would strongly urge those constiuencies that do not want to see 
the DNSO and/or NC dismantled to make every effort to get current on their 
dues.  Not only for this year, but for the past three years.  I believe the 
are two or three groups that are seriously in arrears. 

J. Scott 

Philip Sheppard writes: 

> Please note the e-mail below from Versign. 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com>
> To: "'Philip Sheppard'" <philip.sheppard@aim.be>
> Cc: "Cochetti, Roger" <RCochetti@verisign.com>; "'DNSO Secretariat'"
> <DNSO.secretariat@dnso.org>
> Sent: 01 March 2002 14:02 
> 
> 
> Philip, 
> 
> Two years ago VeriSign announced that it would match any donations made to
> support the work of ICANN's Domain Name Supporting Organization and Names
> Council for up to $100,000.  The purpose of this note is to advise you, with
> some regret, that the offer is hereby withdrawn. 
> 
> We have felt for some time that one of the major issues facing the DNSO and
> the Names Council is a lack of resources and that increased resources, while
> not a solution to all of the DNSO's problems, would go a long way towards
> ensuring the competent functioning of the Council and the provision to it of
> more and better-researched information.  In particular, we thought that
> increased resources would:
> * Allow the Council to hire staff to take the lead in
> developing and implementing well defined processes and procedures to
> facilitate its consensus management role
> * Minimize the amount of subjectivity and increase the amount
> of measurable objective criteria in the consensus-building process
> * Provide clearer direction for working groups, committees,
> constituencies, etc.
> * Make it more readily possible for the NC to perform its role
> of managing the consensus-building process in a way that will create
> increased confidence throughout the Internet community. 
> 
> To encourage such donations, we offered to match any donation made by any
> company or individual up to a total of $100,000.  Since the offer was first
> made in 2000, we have repeated it and a fair amount of work was actually
> done by Names Council committees to design a neutral structure to administer
> whatever funds were received. 
> 
> Despite repeated appeals, no commitments for funds were received except from
> a couple members of the gTLD Registry Constituency.  This is all the more
> disappointing given the fact that quite a few companies who are several
> times larger than VeriSign have employees who sit on the Names Council and
> participate in most of its committees; and that there are now nearly 100
> gTLD registrars, eight gTLD registries, well over a hundred ccTLD operators,
> and hundreds of ISP's and re-sellers who purchase and re-sell domain name
> registration services.  Many of these are profitable and many are quite
> large, so their reason for not donating anything to the DNSO has never been
> clear. 
> 
> Possibly the reason donations were not received is not so much a result of
> organizations not being willing or able to make them but rather a result of
> the fact that the NC itself never promoted this offer.  It is our opinion
> that it is critical to create and implement processes and procedures to
> facilitate the NC's consensus management role in an objective manner.  So it
> seems unfortunate that the NC has never taken any meaningful action to
> establish objective, community-wide consensus management processes. 
> 
> After trying to help the DNSO through community donations for almost two
> years, the time has come to recognize that this approach did not work. 
> 
> Please forward this communication to the Names Council. 
> 
> Respectfully, 
> 
> Chuck Gomes
> Vice President, Policy & Compliance
> VeriSign Global Registry Services 
> 
>  
>