[IGFmaglist] FoIGF/Tides Trust Fund

[Patrick Ryan]

Dear Colleagues,

I will be hosting an informal meeting, open to all, on Tuesday morning before the MAG meeting (details to follow) in order to discuss the new Tides arrangement.  If you are interested in joining, I will send out an invitation for everyone on Monday.   The Tides fund is ready, as is the arrangement between Tides and the UN (a new development in the past few weeks).

To recap, the Tides Foundation is a non-profit and registered as a 501(c)(3) in the United States.  For more than 30 years, it has provided funding vehicles for non-profit and charitable ventures.  

High-level details:
Funders can provide money to Tides directly, and Tides has an arrangement with the UN;
This arrangement avoids the complexities of contracting with the UN, which can take several months;
For U.S. companies, it also provides confirmation that donations are charitable contributions via the 501(c)(3) status, something that is not available by direct donations to the UN;
There will be modalities for credit-card donations, also a new feature;
The Fund charges 3% as its overhead (additional pass-through bank-fees if credit cards are used);
Although U.S. businesses have the most advantage (because of the 501(c)(3) status for charitable donations), it may be used by any private sector or individual contributor globally;
Funds collected may be transferred to the Secretariat, or they could be used to provide funding for other IGF initiatives (this is how we funded Indonesia last year).

How the fund is managed:
By law, the Fund is independently managed by Tides, and it makes recommendations via “donor/advisors” to the fund;
The Fund currently has three initial donor/advisors: Patrick Ryan, Anriette Estherheusen, Ayesha Hassan;
We hope to add one or two more donor/advisors, including a representative from the ICC BASIS community;
We are committed to total transparency in all funding activities so that the community is aware of donors and the uses of funding.

We will shortly have a note on the Tides website that provides information to who to contact at Tides and how to donate.  In the meantime, businesses, individuals or any other donor can reach out directly to the Tides representative to discuss:

	Edward Y Wang (fund manager)
	ewang at tides.org
	[t] 415.561.6387 [f] 415.561.6301

Finally, please recall that this is a non-exclusive solution.  There are other funding models in the works (ISOC is working on a solution that would be based in Switzerland, for example).  It seems unlikely that the ISOC option may be available in time for this year’s IGF—however, we hope that the agreement and arrangements that we have developed with the UN for Tides can be similarly used by ISOC and others.  We want to let 1,000 flowers bloom here.  Additionally, donors that wish to work out an arrangement directly with the UN can do so.

We’ll discuss more next week.  In the meantime,  attached is a draft note that we hope to put on the Tides website sometime this next week, pending approval from the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs.

Cheers,

Patrick





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