[soac-newgtldapsup-wg] fundraising and the donor community

[Andrew Mack <amack@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As I mentioned on Friday I reached out to a few contacts in the donor
community to get their impressions of our work and the possibility of
shaking loose some funding.  The response I got was as follows:

1) The whole issue is not really on the World Bank or donor radar screen at
this point.  There are few people at the Bank (and none that I could find at
the Inter-American Development Bank) that are really focused on the new gTLD
process, and nobody whose job it is to respond to the issues as we are
looking at them.  Overall knowledge of ICANN is weak, since most Bank staff
at the project level are social scientists or economists (don't have the
background), and a lot of tech projects are still focused on access not
policy -- and surprisingly little is internet focused.

2) Overall, my WB contacts agreed that the Bank was substantially behind the
curve on this and internet governance generally.  This is for three
reasons:
    a) less developed countries are generally not focused on this and don't
understand the issues, thus aren't requesting aid here
    b) WB staff who understand this field are very few, and there is nobody
in management who "gets" this, so people don't spend time
    c) the issue is still perceived as narrow and technical, not directly
touching the Bank's core deliverables

3) They suggested that if we are looking for financial support, we re-cast
the issue directly around economic development, explaining specifically how
our JAS work might more or less directly lead to web-enabled jobs and an
expansion of local tech-based businesses.  Not sure if we have the data to
do this, but the sense I got was that most any donor will be looking for us
to make that bridge if we're looking for real money.

4) Given the importance at the Bank of India, Pakistan and a number of
Arabic-speaking nations (all receive a lot of aid), the issue of IDNs and
addressing the digital divide could be a good selling points.

5) It was also suggested that we reach out to the Italian government, as
they've done a lot of work on e-government and other contiguous issues.
Finding two donors who could pair up might be the best way to go.

In sum, we will need to connect a few dots to make a compelling case (which
may be tough).  Good news is that the amount of money we're looking for did
not at all sound out of the realm of possibility if we can make the case.

Andrew
-- 
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                                                       *

***Andrew A. Mack
**Principal
*AMGlobal Consulting

+1-202-642-6429  amack@xxxxxxxxxxxx
2001 Massachusetts Avenue, NW  First Floor
Washington, DC 20036
www.amglobal.com