IGF 2019 – Day 3 – Estrel Saal B – General Assembly Of The Internet Governance Forum Support Association

>> MODERATOR: Hello, everyone. We're not quite ready to start. I know there are some of you that would like to pay your and membership dues. Jennifer is taking record to make sure there's a record you paid your membership dues.

Okay. I think we can start. We're still in the process of collecting membership fees. Last year, we introduced each member, you need to make sure you have paid your membership fee for voting rights. We have sent out documentation.

I would like to say a few words. A member of the Executive Committee has passed away in October. We would be amiss if we did not honor his memory and also think about him. I won't say much, but we all know him. His memory was at the opening as well, which was a very appropriate act to do as he was also a chairman of the IGF meeting 2009. He was, for us, a very close friend. He was a very active person in the IGFSA, and we really mourn him deeply. And may I ask you to honor his memory with a minute of silence. Thank you.

‑‑ [ silence ] ‑‑

>> Please be seated. One of our members sent an apology. He cannot make it to the general assembly. We wrote a few lines. May I ask Nigel to read it.

>> Nigel: Many of you will know that Tarek joined the Brussels office in 2012. I had the privilege to be with him in the Brussels office. In 2014, we set up the office in Geneva in 2014. So I served with him from 2014 onwards. His office is still there.

This is a message from Vince. I met Tarek as he became president of the Egyptian Internet Society. He was the advisory for the telecommunications of Egypt.

His dedication was ever evident. He was a steadfast advisory whose counsel was always helpful. He ascended to minister of Telecommunications For Egypt. It was a special treat to see him at ICANN after other Internet‑inspired meetings as well as where he represented his country's telecommunications interest. I will surely miss him but feel deeply grateful for his friendship and his contributions to the Internet story. Vince.

Thank you.

>> Thank you. And I talk the floor without saying who I am for the transcript. I'm Marcus, the chair of the Internet Governance Forum Support Association Executive Committee.

I understand you would want to say a few words?

>> I'm here to represent Google.

>> Okay. Understood.

>> It was my mistake.

>> I'm going to just change this here.

>> Okay. There's also one member of the Executive Committee, as some of you already know, Marilyn Cade is not well. She's not with us. I can say in the name of the general assembly, we send her best wishes for a speedy recovery. I go and visit her in the hospital tomorrow.

I see nodding. We can take that as a generally accepted resolution of the general assembly.

With that, we go, then, to the agenda. Jennifer is in the process of pulling up the agenda, but it was a very classical agenda of the tasks we have to do. We have to adopt the summary record of the last year's general assembly we held in Paris. It's posted on our website. You have seen it.

If there are no comments for amendment or improvement, I would take it that we accept and adopt is summary record of last year's general assembly.

>> I'm pulling it up still. Sorry.

>> Still in the process of pulling it up, but it will be there.

I take it, then, a count to three ‑‑ I have counted to three. We have adopted is summary record of last year's general assembly, which is posted on the IGFSA website.

And the third agenda item is the election of two members, two seats, that is my seat term has come to an end and the term of Eduardo.

>> Were you turning it over to me?

>> As I recuse myself, as I'm a candidate myself. Can you check this agenda item, the election of two members.

>> Sure. What I wanted to ask is: So we have three candidates: Aiden, Marcus, and Eduardo. I wanted to give each of them a chance to make a brief statement before we go to the vote process. And if it's okay, I will go with the alphabetical order I just went in, and, therefore, Aiden, if you would like to make a statement, please, the floor is yours.

>> Aiden: Hi, everyone. My name is Aiden. For those of you who don't know me, I will introduce myself very briefly. So I'm a public interest technologist. I've been with the Mozilla foundation. I've been a member of the IGFSA for the past three years, probably four years. I should probably double‑check that. I've had the good fortune of attending three IGFs now. I've seen what I think works here. I've seen a few improvements I would like to see, of course. I've been able to participate in other Internet freedom forum to see what works and what doesn't.

I believe IGF has a whole is a wonderful experiment in bringing stakeholders together to be able to shape how a shared resource is managed. I think I'm ready to be able to contribute to the idea to say in helping to better support the IGF so that it can become a more impactful space, I think that my experience in agenda‑setting processes, in contributing to different budgetary processes could be benefit to the IGFSA. While I don't have experience in fundraising, I have experience in at least being able to offer insights into what is proper is appearance for the spending patterns of the nonprofit, for example.

To be very clear, I'm not insinuating and I'm not implying at all that there's been anything improper in the past. Not at all. But I do think if we look at the financials for the IGFSA, there's need to bring more money in, and I think there's a need for more transparency in what the IGFSA is supportings. We definitely need to know what exactly is the impact of the IGFSA's funding on making these national and regional initiatives so important.

So that is something that I hope to be able to contribute to in the future as well. In whatever way I can, I hope to make a difference in the IGFSA, helping to support the small Secretariat, help the Executive Committee, so together we can make sure the IGF and the national and regional initiatives are stronger. Hopefully, we can find some solutions together to some unaddressed issues along the way. Thank you, very much, for your consideration.

>> Thank you, Aiden. I'm sorry for mispronouncing your name. I've never said it in all the time I've known you.

Marcus, would you like to say a few words.

>> Marcus: I'm the incumbent and I was there when we set it up. We set up ISOC and then we set up the IGFSA. I served as secretary. Our first chairman is in the room, Raul. He chaired it. He stepped down, and then I was elected to succeed him. It was in Guadalajara. I've done a lot of the nitty‑gritty work that's dealing with incoming funding requests and also dealing with the banking after ISOC stopped providing the administrative support which has proved actually more time consuming than I had anticipated, but it's a worthwhile exercise. I'm willing to continue and, hopefully, also, we have the continued support of the executive and with the support of (?) Director of ISOC. I agree with Aiden. We are definitely not perfect, and we can do much to make us a better and more efficient organization.

Thank you for your attention.

>> Thank you, Marcus.

One point I want to make clear before I call on Eduardo. This is an election for the Executive Committee. Once the new executive Committee is formed, it will elect a chair. It may be a continuation, but I wanted to make sure we were not doing a vote for the chair at the moment. We're doing a vote for the executive members of the committee.

Eduardo, at this point, would you like to say a few words? I don't see you, but ‑‑ is he here?

>> No, he's not here.

>> I was going to say I would have recognized him, had I seen him.

So in which case, Eduardo has been a member of the Executive Committee and wishes to continue being a member of the Executive Committee. He's opinion a good colleague. I don't know what else to say since he's not here.

Is there a written statement? I didn't know. I only took over this duty at the very last minute and am ignorant.

>> So my name is Jennifer Chung. I'm supporting as the Secretariat of the IGFSA. I'm going to read the written statement prepared by Eduardo.

Dear IGF members, with issues related, I have become aware of the importance.

My interest in participating in the IGFSA Executive Committee has its origin and meaning in the fulfillment of this responsibility for promoting governance dialogues. That's why my interest in participating in it.

I encourage greater anticipation of people in these discussion spaces. I'm an active member of the Colombian governance board and in the IGF itself.

>> Thank you very much, Jennifer. That's the three statements.

At the end of the meeting, I will read the results of the election. I don't know if I will have to help you with the counting or whether you will do it, but I will help.

At this point, therefore, we'll start the balloting. Those that are members, come get your ballot. I turn the meeting back over to our chair.

There's a question?

Please.

>> The emails will be tallied as well.

>> This is Jennifer. The email votes sent in by the deadline, this previous Saturday, have been tallied already and will be included in the final count.

>> Thank you. Any other questions before I turn ‑‑ yes, please.

If you have paid, you can get a ballot. In the meantime, be patient with Jennifer. You can listen to the rest of the meeting from standing in line.

As I said, I'm really trying to pass this back to Marcus.

Marcus, I've passed it back to you.

>> Thank you. You did that in a masterly fashion.

Let's get back, then, to our regular agenda. The next item on the agenda is adoption of the contents and reports of the financial statements for the year. We have a slight anomaly. We always say the annual membership goes from general assembly to general assembly. You're paying for the year that's ending now with the general assembly. According to the bylaws, this follows January 1st to December 31st. The financial on the website is for the year 2018. And we have the financial statement for the first half of this year up, but we don't have a financial statement that goes from general assembly to general assembly. Let me walk you through the annual report, which is on our website ‑‑ well, we could show it and scroll through it. Jennifer is busy collecting money, so it's not worth it, but you can find it on our website. We have all the supporting documents under the general assembly.

Last year in Paris, we elected two new members to the Executive Committee. Marcon Faye.

This brings us to composition of the Executive Committee we had before. When Tarek passed away, we felt it was important to fill his post. Nigel was elected to finish Tarek's term. That's going to be through next year. Then the seat will be open for election.

With that, we have a complete Executive Committee. And then at the end of the vote today, we have the newly constituted Executive Committee for the year. That will follow this general assembly.

Jennifer is the secretary, and dot Asia provides the support for the payment system.

Also, we, according to the bylaws have to notify the general assembly of the new members that have joined the association. It's a simple procedure. You join when you pay your membership dues, and the list of the new members is in the and report. With the newly paid members, it totals up to 226 members of the association, which is not bad, I think. It could be higher. We also hope we get more members from the NRIs, especially as we have a very close relationship with them. I'm encouraged to see the good attendance at this general assembly, which is really quite impressive.

Fundraising, there I also have to agree with Aiden, that we have not been particularly successful. We have two very solid supporters, that is ICANN. We received 50,000 each. We had and Google made a second contribution of 10,000 this year. A third contribution of Google is in the pipeline, but it's not yet in our bank account. I come to that also at the later stage. The contribution from Google is earmarked for enhancing accessibility in the IGF context, and we have so far used most of that paying for realtime transcription for the calls that was a strong request from the community of the Dynamic Coalition of Accessibility and Disability. I welcome here Gunter and Judy. They are from that coalition and very active members, also, of IGFSA.

So since our inception, we have raised $869,000 and $511. Close to 870. It's not bad, but, obviously, it's not good enough. Also, given the growing demand on behalf of the national and regional IGFs.

To begin with, we used to have a fairly rigid budget allocation. When we say we give that percent to the trust funds and to the NRIs, but we readopted the strategy of the budget allocation as we saw the NRIs with the growing number that just needed more money. And we now prioritize the NRIs. We still give fund to the IGF trust fund which is administered by the U.N., but the bulk goes do the national and regional IGFs.

So since the general assembly last year, IGFSA contradicted a total of 97,000 U.S. dollars to the NRIs. 35,000 went to nine regional and subregional IGFs, and 62,000 to 31 initiatives. Total, we've spent more than $400,000 on the national and regional IGFs.

I'm not going to read out all the lists. Again, it's in the annual report. The regional ones, it's ‑‑ it's important to mention that we limit our payment to IGFs that are in developing countries or in economies of transition. So there are national and regional IGFs. It goes from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. We made the contribution of $10,000 to the IGF trust fund. That bring as total of $280,000 to the IGF trust fund.

Lastly, I would like to mention again the accessibility funds with a third contribution from Google. We are funding three DCAD members to attend this IGF. There was a meeting of the Disability Coalition. They participated in all workshops.

We have taken to having informal meetings can exchange of information. They're usually much appreciated. Our thanks go to ICANN for this in‑kind contribution.

One suggestion I would like to make. You've seen the leaflet, the flyer. We would like to update it. We encourage you to send these of meetings, if you have any. The Colombian IGF gracefully translated it in Spanish. That would be a request, that when you have a regional IGF, that you translate into your language. To have it in all U.N. languages, that would be great.

A more technical issue, we did say last year in Paris, that we would appreciate if requests are made well in advance of the meeting. That is maybe four weeks ahead of the meeting. That would be reasonable. It's also in their interest, as you would get the funds ahead of the meeting. Sometimes we request just a few days ahead of a meeting, which is virtually impossible to make the payment in time. The payment arrives at the end of the meeting, that this is definitely one thing where we can be also a little bit firm. We did say last year in Paris, yes, we would use this as a guideline but we will adopt it in a flexible manner. Yes, sometimes we realize you need to change dates, but it's better to send the requests as early as possible. You can always say dates may change, but at least we have a date, and then we can actually deal with it.

We're usually really good at reacting and getting back to you, saying, Yes, we'll support the payment, but the payment usually takes a bit longer.

And the other question raised by Aiden, whether we should actually ask for me, we do encourage reporting on the event, but we have not asked for a financial report. I don't know if anybody has an opinion on that.

Maybe, Aiden, would you like to pick up on that, what you expect the financial statement to say?

>> Aiden: Not looking for a line‑by‑line breakdown of what the money was spent on. It's helpful to know what is the IGFSA money going towards. At a high level, what are the outcomes that are possible because of the funding. I don't need to know they spend X dollars on catering or printed material, but what were the outcomes made possible as a result of these fundings so we're able to highlight the work of the various national and regional initiatives that have been funded.

>> Can you also, please, introduce yourself. Marcon is a member.

>> Thank you very much. I'm a member since last year. Events been a member of IGFSA since the day that it was created. I participated in all of its general assemblies.

At the African level, I know there's seed money giving enabled many countries to start their national process. When they give you, in some countries, $2,000, you can run a whole meeting the whole day. This was very important to start the process and get funding after. The African regional level also, we have ideas for new funding. Also, it helps them to bring some people to the meeting. Some of them will drive. Some of them will come by their own means. And sometimes, also, it is used to buy food, pay for coffee, breaks, so on. We use some of the findings to supplement the IGFSA. I think it's very important.

I've seen many applicants coming today to join because they've seen the affect that the IGFSA's seed money ‑‑ which is not really big money but seed money ‑‑ it is a fund that can bring other people and other money around.

Thank you.

>> There were two ladies who asked for the floor first. Please?

>> Thank you very much. Armenia IGF, just on the reporting and how the money is being spent on regional and National IGFs and the reporting. Actually, I appreciate a lot that we did not give a detailed reporting on what is being paid for because when specifically asked for funding from the sponsors, we are given, like, this money should go only for the printing materials, only for the conference hall renting, only this and that. That makes it quite difficult to organize the event itself. In order to organize, you need all the components there.

Even the socials we do, this is the networking of all the participants. This is so much important, but some sponsors do not give money for such things, and I really do appreciate IGFSA that they do not demand on these details accounting on detailed reporting on what we spend money on specifically on that budget item. We do spend that for the event itself, for the whole composition of it. It brings the value for their discussions and brings in paper along those events.

By the way, thanking on behalf of the southeast European IGF and others for continued support that IGFSA is giving for our initiatives and that really brings the impact, as Aiden was saying. I see more people asking for the floor.

>> It is important for us to receive your answers, that you give money for ‑‑ how to say ‑‑ main national initiative, but you advise (?) And it's important for transparency of all Internet governance process. Thank you for all your support.

>> Thank you. Chris.

>> Thank, Marcus.

>> I work for an organizational support. I'm a supporting member of the IGFSA. Just in terms of Aiden's comments and the discussion of recording what money is used for, I think there's two aspects to it. One, obviously, it's very important in terms of due diligence about how the money is being spent, transparency, but I think there's also the parallel possibility that to start to find best practices and to share about how money is best spent, that's useful to other initiatives.

The last global IGF events have had a lot of specific sessions about NRIs and coming from the NRIs, which are doing a lot of that sharing, developing best practice.

What I would encourage the committee ‑‑ I'm not sure how this has been done explicitly ‑‑ but there's the NRI processes and discussions going on in the IGF to make sure the data about how the money is best used is being fed into their NRI discussions, and that's being fed back here in how the IGF might be best distributing its funds. Perhaps that has been going on mind the scenes, but I haven't seen a lot of explicit linkage between the IGFSA going on in the IGF.

>> We work closely with the Secretariat. The requests we receive, we always ask the IGF Secretariat, whether they have reported on the reporting, whether they're essentially in good standing, whether they're eligible for support. Also, you mentioned the sessions I'm going to participate in this afternoon. As always, more can be done and maybe, also, we can report a little bit more and document a little bit more about the processes.

Edmund?

>> Marcus, you pointed out what I wanted to mention. The IGFSA, traditionally, we have depended on the IGF overall ‑‑ or the IGF Secretariat. We make sure they have provided the previous report, and, also, we expect them, after their implementation, to the next report. That gives us an implication in how those fund are spent and how those initiatives are going. I think a couple of colleagues have mentioned that adding paperwork is probably not ‑‑ it's probably burdensome.

However, I take Chris' thought in whether the IGF says perhaps with the Secretariat's help, there can be learning from the NRI together with the IGF Secretariat and also even publish it or repost it on our website or both on the IGF website and our website. I think that's a good suggestion.

>> You anticipated what would have been my concluding remarks. We can definitely document the success stories. Ask the IGFSA how it helped you. Pictures can help and videos can help for the website. We have 30 minutes left, and we're told we have to leave the room at half past. Can you be short on that, Aiden?

>> Aiden: Sure. I'll be very short. I appreciate the comment I've heard and the content you've provided. I think the goal is light‑touch reporting. Nobody is asking for reports on the seed ground of $2,000. The dire situation the IGFSA is in, if there is to be a desire to embark on additional fundraising, in order to create some kind of professional fundraising package, in order to be able to highlight to potentially donors the IGFSA work is doing, it's important to know the outcome. Again, looking for a light touch and looking to increase the amount of donations coming in so more funds can ultimately be dispersed to the national and regional initiatives. That's just what I was suggesting. Thanks.

>> Next, please.

>> We're hosting IGF in (?) I have one confusion. Last year, we applied for IGFSA fund ‑‑ not last year, this year. We also received fund from Secretariat. When you got support from trust fund, that will not support those NRIs. So what exactly is in these two funds. Why not to fund the same event? Is there any decision or bylaws that mention you should not get that thing.

Another thing, I want to get some clarity on regional IGF as we host IGF 2020, are we eligible to apply for support or does it go to Secretariat to apply?

>> The Secretariat came into additional funds used to support regional IGFs. We looked at that and thought it would be a stretch, given the fact that there are increasing numbers of demands that allows us to support more IGFs if you don't fund the regional and we don't have enough funds. We want to fund the requests that come in. For some, in that case, national regional IGFs will be the luckier ones that get funding from two sources. So we early on coordinated with the Secretariat and said, No. We'll let you have the priority and choose your NRIs, and we stepped back with those. That's essentially in order to stretch our funds to go as far as possible.

Can we close the discussion on this agenda item?

(Overlapping speakers)

>> We don't have the time.

>> Remember, this is the general assembly. I need to get clarity.

>> Yes.

>> Is this ‑‑ or by rule?

>> It's a decision by the Executive Committee.

>> Discretionary level?

>> Yes.

>> Okay.

Audrey has something to say.

>> I wanted to take a quick check. We're closing receipt of ballots. I wanted to make sure everyone who wanted a ballot and got one and turned it in. This is your last chance.

>> Thank you. Can we go to the next agenda item? I would ask Jamison, our treasurer, to walk us through the annual budget and the finance situation.

Please, Jamison.

>> Jamison: Thank you very much, Marcus. Good afternoon, everyone. Or morning, whatever it may be around the world.

Well, our chair, actually, giving us a very detailed account of our funding that's been spent. It's right there on the website. Up until this moment, there's a slight change in the financial situation.

We have a revised balance of $51,466. So all the other parameters remain the same. The credits so far for 2019 is $415,000.

Debit, $122944.30. $122944.30. So this, we have discussed a lot on finance. Let me also make this comment that the original objective we're getting to it gradually, but we're still far away from it because we suspected to have massive individual support from members. We look forward to that. Executive Committee talks about that all the time, and we welcome creative ideas. Now we can get more members, and now we can increase our financial base. So our funding is by the Secretariat. That's the major focus. We also do contribution so the Secretariat itself and are funding the budget line, like accessibility, like captioning, and things like that.

So this is where I'll stop.

>> Thank you. Are there any questions or comments? Can I take it that there's a general agreement that we take it in that way by prioritizing the NRIs but, at the same time, making a monetary contribution. This year, we gave 2,000 to the trust fund, but the bulk of the resources went directly to the NRIs. Also, we have very little overhead in that. So the money goes to them, and it's for them to use as they see fit, as we discussed.

>> Mary: Thank you for the presentation. My name is the Mary from Nigeria. I'm a member of the IGFSA. A good recipient of the awards support from IGFSA. But for my national, regional, and continental, thank you very much.

Just a quick question. I think it was in Geneva that IGFSA decided to support Anya for one year, I suppose, ancillary or something like that. I just want you to know it's ended, and we're not supporting that. Thank you.

>> Yes. That was in 2018. Essentially, that's the term used for reporting to the tax authority, but it was a total of more than 50,000 U.S. dollars went into that. It's a bit complex, but before Anya had a contracting with the U.N. You can't go into a staff contract. You need a break. We've funded her during the break where she provided services to the Secretariat.

Yes, it's sort of a solution to go past the rigid U.N. regulation. I think it was well received by the NRIs as she was able to continue her service. It was a great help to create the network of NRIs that we have now.

Are there other questions, comments?

>> Incoming MAG member and member of the coalition on accessibility and disability. On behalf of DCAD, we would like to say thank you very much to the IGFSA for the support that IGFSA has provided for accessibility. That's the realtime test transcription for the MAG meetings and other general support. In this year in particular, the travel support for three persons with disabilities to enable us ‑‑ and when I say us, it's Julia, myself, and Mr. Abdullah Demla (phonetic) to participate, certainly in the DCAD session but also to participate in other accessibility sessions and also generally in the IGF. So that has been very, very beneficial, and we very much appreciate the support of IGFSA and Marcus, who had to do a fair bit of admin at a very late stage to make it all come together. So, again, thank you.

>> Can I take it, then, that we're in broad agreement that it's a loose budget in a sense. We built and prioritized the NRIs and gave most of our income to the NRIs and reserved a small part of it for the IGF trust fund.

Do we have an agreement on that? I take it there's no opposition. I take silence for agreement, and we go ahead in this way that has continued before.

The next agenda item is on fundraising. Looking at the advanced time, I would like to finish the mandatory agenda items, also the release obligations of the Executive Committee members on the Swiss law. There has to be a vote saying the board cannot be held responsible for any act because we agree, as an association with the activities of the Executive Committee.

In our bylaws, translated into French, it's different, for English, it's totally incomprehensive. And the new word, release of obligation, is most used in Anglo countries. Can we have that agreement that, everybody was done in accordance with the bylaws. It was not inappropriate. Money was well spent. Can I see heads nodding? Yes. Hands up? Yes.

Anyone against it? No? Okay. I can take it, then, that the Executive Committee can call itself lucky we have been released of our obligation.

With that, can we go back to the voting?

>> I'm weight for the final check count. We had a count, and it's now being checked.

I will say something on fundraising. We had a great agreement on fundraising. I was supposed to send an email out saying, Remember, folks ‑‑ and I did send my email. I'm not asking people to have a conversation again. Just reminding people to think about it. Think about how you can help in fundraising. It's not just the Executive Committee.

The other thing is, on crowd funding, we spent a bit of time this year, and the Secretariat has set up arrangements. We wanted to make sure we didn't run a foul with the money crossing borders and money laundering and everything. We'll be coming out with another email for you.

Obviously, there's ways of doing funding, including crowd‑source funding. We've set one up. It's the thing to do.

Do we have a ballot?

>> Yeah. One last total.

>> Thank you. You introduced that really very well. You'll again anticipated what I said.

Can we set up a committee outside the effective committee for fundraising, a committee of volunteers?

>> Am I'm willing to help with that. I have a hard time fundraising, one, because I'm incompetent at it, but, two, I have a problem asking people for money. I'm willing to help organize a committee and do the administrative stuff for, you know ‑‑ this is probably my last year on the Executive Committee. So I'm willing to help do that, if you want. I'm not going to raise any myself.

>> Thank you. Well, this is also a little bit ‑‑ we don't really have anyone on the Executive Committee with extensive experience in fundraising. This is a job in itself.

>> So any of you who are experts, pros at fundraising, you know how to get money from a stone, get in touch with me, and we'll figure out what we can do to get the money from stones.

Do we have a result. Give me something that tells me.

>> Sorry about that.

>> That was me.

>> The total is that.

>> Okay. So in terms of the votes, we have Marcus received 33 votes. Eduardo received 27 votes. And Aiden received seven votes. We therefore have our two continuing executive committees. Thank you to all candidates. Thank you for your statements and everything. Thank you.

( Applause )

>> And thank you guys for the countings and recounting. I don't know your names, but thank you.

>> Thank you, Audrey, for conducting this so competently and energetically.

I wonder, Aiden, would that be something for you to sort of lead a fundraising committee of members? I don't want to put you on the spot. You don't have to say yes or no now. Just think about it.

>> I have no objection to you leading it and me stepping back. Don't feel you will be getting in my way at all.

(Laughter)

>> Are there any other comments on fundraising, crowd funding, brilliant ideas, what we could do? We had at one point: Can we do something during ICANN meetings? Have a run for fun so people have to pay or ‑‑ I mean, the original idea when we actually started the IGFSA was we're not going after the big money, but we try to find contributions from you and me, from small donors. Remember Obama did a lot of fundraising through crowd funding. Managed to get a lot of funding through that. We thought that would work, but we have not been successful in getting it together. If anyone has ideas, we have 10 minutes and 17 seconds.

>> So we rushed it, and then we've got time. That's good.

>> Well, I thought in case we get down the rabbit hole with fundraising ‑‑ ( laughter ) ‑‑ but we can have 10 minutes for brainstorming. Any comments are welcome. We also have any other business. We can have that together as one agenda item. Any comments, any suggestions, feel free to step in.

If not, I give you back 10 minutes of your life. Yes, please.

>> Thank you very much. All of the NRIs, the activities, they put that on the social media, but I do not see the same for the IGFSA. So we can do and, in this way, spread the word and showcase the whole success that we do worldwide.

>> Again, this is something maybe we could do with volunteers from the community to help us. I'm not particularly good with social media. I admit it. You know, we said just document a little bit the success stories. I think it also helps with fundraising. The more dynamic we look, the better we are.

Edmund?

>> I think that's a good suggestion, what the Secretariat can do is repost. A lot of NRIs themselves would be promoting and discussing their own initiatives. What we want to do is amplify that. That might allow us to let people see the events and activities we support and, also, make them more interested in supporting us overall.

>> Just continuing what Edmund said. We're really happy to showcase the work that's done in all the different initiatives, the national and regional initiatives. Of course, if you have pictures as well, we would be happy to post and put it on the social media and website.

I know the IGF Secretariat and social media, they do post a lot of things. We're looking forward to do that for the IGFSA members as well.

>> Just watching the ‑‑ even though we didn't formalize the remote participation, we've had a couple of people commenting. I have a comment from jolly that says any crowd‑funding campaign needs a good video. I hope that means Jolly is going to offer to help us put together a video.

We've also received a message from the remote hub saying congratulations to the new executive team. Thank you.

>> Thank you for that. Jolly is a video master. Let's work with Jolly.

Nigel, do you want to say anything?

>> Yes. I just wondered ‑‑ and I recognize that $25 is not a vast amount, but there seems to be a whole lot of people, the NRIs themselves, that are supportive. If you take the number of people that registered for this conference, and I think we need to perhaps try to get that message out stronger to registrants. This is important to the success of these meetings.

>> That's a good idea. When you think about 2,000 or 3,000, if each gives 10 francs or 10 euros, it's quite a lot of money.

>> So maybe we should put donation envelopes to the bags.

>> They produce a leaflet. I think it will be on the seats tomorrow.

>> But if we got it in the bags, then it wouldn't be competition.

>> There's that.

Any other comments, suggestions ‑‑ yes, please. Can you introduce yourself?

>> Yes. Thank you. My name is Michael. I'm French. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm a brand new member, and I give my first vote. Anyway. I just have an idea. It's very simple. I'm on your Facebook page, and I don't know if you know, but you're allowed to put a donation button. Just an idea. This is crowd sourcing. It's a simple suggestion, but a very excellent suggestion.

>> Thank you very much.

>> Just a comment on that. It's one of the things that over the year and getting a new Secretariat in place, and that was we had to have an account to have the donate go into. We just recently got there. Thank you for reminding us that was something we needed to do.

>> My pleasure. Thank you.

>> You went first. Please.

>> Just following up on that suggestion. There's a program called donor box that some of you may know. That is underlying that button for donate if you put that on a website. I believe it's quite useful and streamlined. So it would be worthwhile checking into Donor Box.

>> I will. I will come out and send a list at some point, or a reminder so people who want to help can get things done. We're good at coming up with ideas at meeting, and then a year goes by, and we should have done more.

>> Thank you. Congratulations to Marcus Kumar.

I'm serving the Secretariat (?) This is for Jennifer. I am a new member. I am giving to a membership fee. Thank you very much, everyone.

>> Thank you for that.

>> You're welcome.

>> Judy, do you want to say something? Please.

>> Thank you, Marcus. Just to follow up, we could have actually a box at the IGFSA booth whenever we have the IGF meeting so if somebody is not able to get the $25 or they don't want to be a member, they can drop it whatever they have.

>> Another good suggestion. It doesn't cost much. Worth trying.

If there are no more comments, no more suggestions, no more questions, then we have exhausted the agenda. I would like to thank you all for attending and being active participants in the meeting and close the meeting until next year. Let's stay in touch. Let's not drop the ball in between two annual meetings.

Thank you very much.

( Applause )