Internet Governance Forum Support Association (IGFSA)
33rd meeting of the Executive Committee

16 April 2019

Summary Record

1. The Executive Committee held its 33rd meeting on 16 April 2019. The meeting took place in a virtual setting, with the following participants:

Marilyn Cade, Avri Doria, Makane Faye, Markus Kummer, Nilmini Rubin, Eduardo Santoyo, Jimson Olufuye; Jennifer Chung (Secretary).

A quorum was established for the meeting, with seven of the nine Executive Committee members taking part in the call.

Anja Gengo from the IGF Secretariat also participated in the call to brief the Executive Committee on some of its activities.

2. A draft agenda had been circulated prior to the call and was adopted as proposed:

    1. Adoption of the agenda
    2. Briefing by the IGF Secretariat
    3. Briefing from last week’s MAG meeting (incl. Donors’ meeting)
    4. Banking arrangements
    5.  Financial situation
    6. Fundraising
    7. AOB

 

Briefing by the IGF Secretariat

3. The Chair invited Anja Gengo to brief the Executive Committee on the Secretariat’s plans as regards capacity building. Anja gave a comprehensive overview on their proposal to provide funding to NRIs from Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The proposal was currently under review by the UN in New York. The Chair thanked Anja for her very informative briefing.

Briefing from the MAG meeting

4. The Secretary reported on the MAG meeting/Open Consultation that had taken place in Geneva the previous week. She noted that good progress had been made in advancing the programme for this year’s meeting and that the Host Country was very committed to making the IGF 2019 a success. The Donors’ meeting had revealed that the IGF Trust Fund was still short of its projected budget.

Banking arrangements

5. The Chair recalled that the Executive Committee had agreed to appoint Jimson Olufuye, as its Treasurer. As by now he had assumed this position, he should also be given access to IGFSA’s e-banking so that he could carry out financial transactions. The bank had given to understand that it would take some time examine a request to grant access to IGFSA’s e-banking to a person not based in Switzerland. It was therefore proposed, as an interim solution, to authorize IGFSA’s accountant, Michael Parratt of C.M.A.C Accountancy, to execute payments under the supervision of the Treasurer. This arrangement would maintain the current system, that is that any payment needed to be signed off by two persons. The Executive Committee approved the proposal. A separate decision would be prepared for the purposes of getting the bank’s authorization for the new arrangements.

Financial situation

6. The Treasurer gave a brief overview of the financial situation. IGFSA had received the contribution from the Number Resource Organization of USD 50,000 and was now again in a position to provide funding to NRIs. With the latest contribution there was now a balance of USD 97,715 in the IGFSA account. This did not reflect the most recent payments of USD 12,000 to NRIs. He also noted that in addition there were reserved funds of about USD 35,0000.

7. Avri reported on the proposed exchange of letters with DotAsia. The draft was now ready and would be shared with the Executive Committee for final approval. She described it as a very simple agreement with a set of service fees for activities such as website hosting and technical maintenance. Avri noted that as previously indicated DotAsia had waived the fees for the first half of 2018.

Fundraising

8. Avri informed the Executive Committee that the crowdfunding platform prepared with DotAsia had now been set up and was ready to go.

9. As agreed on the last call, Marilyn had spoken to some past donors and representatives of tech companies in the Washington DC area. She noted that one of the main challenges was that some of these companies already contributed to the IGF Trust Fund or directly to some NRIs and that it was therefore difficult to convince them that they should contribute to IGFSA. She would also approach some companies which were under new leadership. Marilyn noted that IGFSA did not have what US corporations would consider a professional fund-raising package. The Chair recalled that he had sent out a draft letter and a slide deck and invited all EC members to look at these drafts and help improve them.

AOB

10. The Chair informed the Executive Committee that Tarek was still in hospital, but responding well to his treatment. As he was going to visit him in hospital, the Executive Committee asked him to convey their best wishes for a speedy recovery.

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