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

[Andrew Mack <amack@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony,

This is helpful, thanks.  I know the Italians have not been the only ones
looking at this.  They came to my mind given their relationship with the WB
-- where they've co-funded a number of activities connected to our space --
but you're right, they're by no means alone.

I think we should test the waters with any number of donors, once we have
our "development rationale" in place of course.

Good news is that if we are coherent and can attract even preliminary
interest from a few donors, it could give us some leverage with ICANN to ask
for bundled/reduced price approaches as part of our work.

In a perfect world, a combination of donor + foundations/trusts + corporate
foundations would be best I think, since it would provide "defense" against
charges that this was either (pick one)
     a) not connected to development/not a priority
     b) not sustainable, since too small
     c) anti-competitive, in some way hurting business and/or the cc's

I think working on that "what's in it for the donor" one-pager is a pretty
high priority at this stage, since without it we're very limited in who
might support this work.

AAM

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Anthony Harris <harris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Andrew,
>
> This is very enlightening information, and actually
> confirms my impression as to potential donor
> interest, which I pick up within the GKP environment
> which includes a number of donor agencies.
>
> With regards to reaching out to governments, that
> is a good idea. For example, the following are donor
> agencies related to national governments:
>
> SIDA - Swedish International Development Cooperation
>              Agency - www.sida.se
> SDC - Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
>             www.sdc.admin.ch
>
> Both of these agencies have been very active since the
> WSIS supporting ICT social inclusion initiatives in many
> parts of the world. They tend to focus on certain specific
> under-developed countries.
>
> Hope this is useful
>
> Tony
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> *From:* Andrew Mack <amack@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> *To:* soac-newgtldapsup-wg@xxxxxxxxx
> *Sent:* Monday, February 07, 2011 7:47 PM
> *Subject:* [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] fundraising and the donor community
>
> 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
> --
> *
>                                                        *
>
> ***Andrew A. Mack
> **Principal
> *AMGlobal Consulting
>
> +1-202-642-6429  amack@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> 2001 Massachusetts Avenue, NW  First Floor
> Washington, DC 20036
> www.amglobal.com
>
>
>


-- 
*
                                                       *

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

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