The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We all live in a digital
world.
We all need it to be open and
safe.
we all want to trust.
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Hello, again I'm Markus Kummer, the Chair of the IGFSA. And we just had a chat from one of our executive members who can't find the way into the room. Jennifer, can you send him the link?
This is our annual event, the General Assembly is the highest body of the association. They checked our bylaws and we don't need a quorum. That was check and we thank you for participating.
Jennifer, can you show the agenda?
Okay. This is the agenda I had sent out the end of last month. And before we adopt the agenda, I would like to honor our member, Executive Committee member that sadly passed away earlier this year. Makane Faye. I would like us to pay tribute to him by observing a minute of silence. Thank you for joining me in this minute of silence.
[moment of silence]
Thank you, can we switch back to the agenda to begin our business, here for the job we have to do. In order with our bylaws. General Assembly is not particularly exciting. Only exciting agenda item, so to speak is the Executive Committee election, for the new members of the Executive Committee. I suggest reversing the order and dealing with the Executive Committee election immediately after the adoption of the agenda, and all the other items are required by our bylaws. We have to approve the summary record of last year's General Assembly. We have to adopt the contents of the reports and financial statements and approve the annual budget. We have then also discussion more in depth in fund‑raising. Lastly, we have to decide on a modification of the articles of association that were sent out a recommendation by the Executive Committee in this regard. And finally, we have to release obligations of the Executive Committee members. That means they're not held legally responsible for anything that happens during the year. It is the membership that assumes the responsibility. If we have time we will discuss any other business. With that, can I get approval of the agenda as approved by the Executive Committee. And also in the reversal of the order I just suggested.
Unless I hear no ‑‑ unless I hear an objection, I consider then this agenda as approved.
I see positive signs in the chat. We should more members joining. We should be honorable member. You have assisted every single General Assembly. A hand up from Chris. So we have this agenda approved as it stands.
With that, we can go to agenda item 3. That is the elections. And I will hand over to Jimson Olufuye our outgoing member who will serve as the election officer. Please, Jimson. Over to you.
>> Jimson Olufuye: Thank you, Markus. Greetings to every one of us and welcome. My name is Jimson Olufuye. IGFSA and contemporary consultant. Outgoing Executive Committee member and the election officer. I will say a few words before the election. Since this might be my last official speech, maybe after the visitation of the report, the financial report.
I would like to thank my colleagues in the Executive Committee for their cooperation and hard work in delivering on the IGFSA mandate. Many thanks to you the IGF community for stepping forward and putting your money where your mouth is by paying your dues and donating generously to costs and by standing for election.
I have no doubt we will all continue to press forward with our objectives because we have a goal of enhanced prosperity and peace in the world. We could be proud that we made some progress.
Again, thank you for those that put their names forward for election.
And now to the outcome of the election. The 2021 IGFSA Executive Committee election was conducted ‑‑ concluded at 12:00 p.m. today. In accordance with the election format and procedures published on the IGFSA website. The original election started November 26, 2021, at 12:00 a.m. UTC and all ballots were vertically spoiled due to incomplete candidate list. We had to do a reset and started again December 3, 2021, at 11:30 p.m. We finished that, as I said earlier, December 10, 2021, that is today, at 12:00 p.m. I want to thank you for your cooperation.
Well, about 33 ballots were cast. And were sent out. And 28 were cast out of the 33. We have the following candidates that put their names forward. It is also reflected on our website. [Listing names]
And here are the results. Fiona got nine votes. 17.3%. Amrita got 10 votes, that is 19.2%. Anriette got 22 votes, 42.3%. Fotjon three votes 5.8%. Kmohan one vote, 1.9%. Lawrence one vote, 1.9%. Finally Olusegun six votes, 11.5%. So with this outcome, we have as elected and winner Anriette Esterhuysen, and Amrita Choudhury. 42.3% and 19.2% respectively. Congratulations. I want to thank the Secretariat for doing a particularly good job. Back to you, Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you Jimson for this diligent overseeing of the election process and congratulations to Anriette Esterhuysen and Amrita Choudhury. We're pleased to welcome you among ourselves. I would take this opportunity to thank the other candidates that showed interest and submitted their statements of interest.
I wonder, I think I see both of our new Executive Committee members are present either online or on‑site. I kindly invite them to say a few words. Anriette Esterhuysen, are you in the room?
>> Anriette Esterhuysen: Good morning, Markus. Good morning to Marcus and everyone else in IGFSA. This is really an honor. Not really a deserved honor. I have not been that active in the IGF support association, even though I always supported it. We first started thinking of this idea in the Working Group on IGF improvements, at that time I was still APC Executive Director. And busy with that and then became MAG Chair. But my term as MAG Chair is over. When I was asked to stand for this Executive Committee position, I did it with that in mind. That I will have time. That I believe so much in what IGFSA is doing. And I look forward to helping with fund‑raising. It is a horrible task, but it is something I have done for most of my career. I just hope I can make a contribution.
I look forward to working with you all. Thanks for the confidence in me. I think I deserve it less because I haven't been so active as others of you.
But I will try and make up for it. Back to you Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Anriette Esterhuysen. You are most welcome as an Executive Committee member and we look forward to learning from your experience. And the second new Executive Committee member is Amrita Choudhury, are you in the room as well or online?
>> Amrita Choudhury: I'm online. Thank you very much for, you know, kind of electing me. I'm new to this IGFSA. I have never been part of it. So I hope to learn from all of you and help in, you know, meeting the objectives which IGFSA is all about.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Amrita Choudhury new perspectives are welcome and sometimes new eyes see things differently. We look forward also to learn and work with you. I think the election result is a positive result. It enhances our geographical diversity and definitely improves our gender balance of the Executive Committee. I think that is a very welcome result.
With that, then I think we can move on to our orderly agenda. And next item is the approval of the summary record of the last General Assembly.
Summary record has been posted on the website. I don't know if you had time to look through it. Jennifer, can you walk us through it? It is up on the screen here.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Yes, thank you, Markus. My name is Jennifer Chung, Secretary of The IGFSA. This is on the website and details of when the General Assembly sent out to the mailing list. I'm not sure if you are able to see my screen. I am showing ‑‑
>> MARKUS KUMMER: We can see it.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: It is still showing the PowerPoint. I will see if I can drop the link in the chat. I thought I was smart.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: We can see it.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Oh, good. It is a simple record of the General Assembly of last year. There is a recording of the live stream as all sessions are recorded and archived for I guess recordkeeping.
I don't want to go through the entire thing and take up too much time. But the agenda was set out pretty much the same as the agenda we have today. We had it in a virtual setting as the IGF was in a virtual setting last year.
We had Aubrey, who was the previous IGFSA Executive Committee to serve as elections officer last year and presided over the elections last year, which resulted in five new EC members. I'm sorry. Four new EC member and one returning member. They're respectfully Joyce Chen, Brian cute, Mr. Wisdom Donkor, Christopher Mondini. And the returning member is Mr. Nigel Hickson. We went through the adoption of the content of the report from last year and financial statements and approved the annual budget. There was a discussion item on fund‑raising and crowdfunding that was the release of previous Executive Committee members. That is the overview of the 2020 General Assembly of IGFSA.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Jennifer. You see the summary record in front of you. Are there any comments? If not I will take it in accordance that we are in agreement with last year's General Assembly summary. I see positive signs. It is approved. No objection, no comments, then it is approved unanimously. As in previous years.
We go to the next agenda item. The annual report. Again, over to you Jennifer to walk us through it.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Markus. With this one, I think I should share the actual document and walk us through in a little more detail. I will unshare this and reshare.
Okay. Here we go. Kelvin, if you can drop that URL into the chat room for our Zoom participants as well, that would be great. Thank you.
So here is the annual report of the IGFSA activities that was carried out between the last General Assembly and today.
It covers, of course ‑‑ as I mentioned that we have the structures of the association which remains pretty much unchanged. As mentioned before, it was the previous General Assembly was carried out on the 2 November 2020. It was done in a virtual setting. We had over 60 IGFSA members that attended solely by remote participation. We have people here in Katowice and online in Zoom. Mentioned previously in the summary record we had four candidates elected to the IGFSA Executive Committee. I will not repeat the names again. We had a returning EC member that came back to serve on the EC. Here you can see the full slate of the Executive Committee. I will go on.
We had a prolific year this year. The Executive Committee had 19 meetings over the course of this year. Not including committee meetings that dealt with fundraising. A small Group. There was another small Group that dealt with communications and strategy. The EC is supported by the Secretariat and sectary. And we have accountant Michael Parratt that assists us with accounting and banking issues.
For the membership, we have two categories of membership. In 2021, we have received five new members and one new organizational member. Bringing the total to 256 registered members. The EC admitted the new following members. You can see the list of new individual members. Amrita Choudhury, Anriette Esterhuysen, Mohan Raidu, Olusegun Olugbile, Lidia Best.
And we admitted the following new organizational member, the European Internet Forum. We have a more in‑depth agenda item for fundraising this figure was computed as of 14 October 2021 we received a total of $114,473.18 US in contributions.
While membership fees are not the primary source of funding to fulfill our mission, we also received in part of this total, $1,973.18 as membership dues and individual donations.
Here you can see a breakdown of all the contributions received as of the 15th of November of this year.
We received $30,000 from Google earmarked for accessibility. 30 thousand from ICANN, and received 50,000 USD from the Number Resources Organization. And we also received $2,500 from ICANN Business Constituency. And as previously mentioned, we also received a sum from our individual membership fees. So that brings us to the total you can see on the screen here.
As before, the budget and allocation of funds is decided at the General Assembly by the membership. And we have prioritized this in a flexible manner, especially giving seed funding to NRIs in the developing world.
We seek a high priority to strength know and promote exchange and collaboration with the NRI network. As part of the priority this year, IGFSA has contributed total off $20,000 U.S. to the NRI. 3,000 were allocated to the two regional and subregional IGFs. $15,000 to nine separate national initiatives. $2,000 were awarded to youth initiatives, bringing up total contributions to NRIs to date to $499,000. And this is the current funding situation as of 15 November this year.
This is the projected funds allocation for 2022. As previous years, we have done the 10,000 USD to the U.N. IGF trust fund. We anticipate also having $60,000 U.S. for the national and regional IGFs. $30,000 is still allocated for the accessibility fund, and there is the projected administrative expenses which include fees from the Secretariat, accounting fees and also bank fees as you can see there on your screen.
So as I mentioned before, this year as well, we have made a contribution of $10,000 U.S. to the U.N. IGF trust fund which brings up the total of our contributions to date to $300,000 U.S.
And here there is a breakdown in detail of which of the national, regional, and youth initiatives we have approved funding for. We have approved funding for CAIGF, EuroDIG, Armenia, Chad, Lebanon, Guatemala IGFs, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon, and Uganda IGFs. And here, we also have NRI that is having the pilot meeting, Comoros IGF, and two youth initiatives, youth IGF Argentina and youth IGF Ukraine.
At the top of the page, you see the four national IGFs were approved for a higher sum than others because they also contain a youth component in the program. And the IGFSA EC felt it is good to encourage the developments especially in the current, national IGFs that don't have this component.
The accessibility fund, the contribution from Google was earmarked for enhancing the accessibility of the IGF. This fund is set up for this purpose. The contribution of $10,440.90 was used to provide real‑time transcription in the intercessional calls of the IGF's multistakeholder Advisory Group and Dynamic Coalitions. I am almost at the end of this report. I think you are probably bored of listening to my voice.
This year, we did something special, I think, because of all the different meetings that we have had. We established a small Group within the EC to look at value propositions for donors, targeted efforts, messages, presentations were made to different stakeholder Groups and constituency Groups to broaden the donor base. You can see, as I mentioned previously we received a donation from the ICANN Business Constituency as part of this effort.
You will hear more from the EC members that are headlining this particular effort in a little bit.
And we also ‑‑ the EC and the Secretariat used a lot of the virtual NRI meetings held this year to promote the association, raise awareness and recruit new members.
Finally, we kind of piloted a new quarterly IGFSA newsletter that we launched in June of this year to inform members about developments in the Internet Governance sphere and showcased some small and short video interviews from the IGFSA community to showcase donors, to showcase the national, regional initiatives that have received support from us. And also to kind of showcase our new IGFSA EC members to introduce them to the community if they are not already known. And I think we will probably start our new quarterly newsletter with introducing our two new EC members.
So this is my overview of the report. Back to you, Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much, Jennifer, for this comprehensive overview. Are there any questions?
There is a hand up. Please?
>> ATTENDEE: So hi, everyone. My name is Abdeldalil. I am a former member, I will come back here. Thank you for the presentation of the annual report. I think that congratulation for that. So you do a good job. Congratulations to the members and our Secretariat. It is so hard because it is defendant writing the report and coordinating people. It is not easy.
So my suggestion is that as we now we have some emerging School of Internal ‑‑ how does IGFSA can support this type of Group. And as an aside about capacity building. We cannot only wait to organize our annual meeting, but there is some ‑‑ because locally about doing some capacity building. So in this case, how does IGFSA can be flexible on that? So thank you so much. I'm representing IGF Chad. Thank you for your support. With all your support we cannot do anything. Thank you so much.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much for that. I think your point is well taken. My suggestion would be to put it on the agenda of our next meeting, or the first meeting of the Executive Committee that newly constituted. Some school so far we have not supported on the Internet Governance, but that is something worth considering.
One of our new members, I know Anriette Esterhuysen is heavily involved in the African summer school scene. I mean, the question is always the availability of resources. And unfortunately, if we can get back to that on the fund‑raising, we could do with having more resources at our disposal, I think we listened to you note with thanks that our support helped with your own IGF. Any question? If not, can we approve the report as presented and go to the next agenda item?
>> ATTENDEE: Thank you, Markus. I think we come from a long way. My name is Nicolas from Tanzania. Hi, Jeff. I am not a member or anything. I just sneaked in to listen to the annual general meeting. I would like to appreciate your support on behalf of Tanzania IGF. And also I would like to second the idea that was brought by Chad, that if you would consider the School of The Internet Governance. Because the School of Internet Governance is where we are trying to groom young people into participation of the process and the process of the IGF, regional, global, national.
So to us the schools are actually the breeding ground for the young people, women and girls and boys to be able to learn the multistakeholder processes, the infrastructure stuff and all that. So when they come to IGF they have something concrete to contribute.
Last is the ‑‑ I would like ‑‑ on the issue of fund‑raising. I would like you to expand ‑‑
>> MARKUS KUMMER: May I interrupt with your indulgence. We have fund‑raising as an item. You are welcome to join the discussion. Right now, we can do the regular business and adopt the summary. I see the room is filling up. How many people are in the room? Unfortunately, it is a bit frustrating. We don't really see so much who is in the room.
Oh, thank you for giving us a better picture. Yes.
>> ATTENDEE: I notice how few people voted compared to the number of members we have. Now, when I was one of you, I never did anything about it. I never worried about it. I'm wondering, is the percentage decreasing? Is it something perhaps we should include in future reports? And perhaps even something we should do something about? Thanks?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. I think your concern was also mine. I was also negatively surprised when I saw the numbers. But I think it is the online process does not make it easier when you have physical meetings, there were a lot of people that came at the last minute and paid membership fees and wanted to vote. You had to pay your membership dues beforehand to be eligible. Thank you to the Secretariat for running the process so smoothly. But I think it is also a bit of a deterrent for people to participate. It is definitely a point to look into. The point is well taken. We have not that many members who can be considered to be members in good standing. That is members who have actually paid their membership dues. But this, I think happens in many associations. It is difficult to motivate people in the online setting. Anyway, great to see you Aubrey. With that, can we adopt the report as presented?
I see it is suggested that we should. I can't hear any objection. I take it that report is adopted. As presented.
And we also need to approve the financial statements. A lot of that was included already, in the report. I hand over to our treasurer his last duty as outgoing Executive Committee member. Jimson, you have the floor.
>> Jimson Olufuye: Okay, thank you, Markus. I will share my screen now. The record will follow with me. Okay ...
Here we are. I will use this opportunity again to appreciate the EC Group for having me as your treasurer. I work with the Executive Committee, it is a pleasure to serve. And as I bow, I present my last report. Much of this has been captured in Jennifer's presentation. This is how it is as of 15/11/2021. This report is presented following article 16 of our Charter. Charters of the association shall derive its resources from membership dues, contributions provided by membership, public and private donations, grants, fees, and other payments in‑kind contributions, and support, and its own assets.
So we have three accounts, the USD account, the Swiss franc account and euro account. This is last balance as of 9/10/2020, which is the last recording. From that time until this moment at 15/11. This is what we have exactly. These are the details in the three accounts. As mentioned accessibility fund is drawn down to 18,450.75 USD. In the US account it is 71,708.22. And Swiss Franc account is $1,336.91. And Euro account is $1,538.28.
And the total expenses $63,221.64. Indeed, the NRI disbursements, 26 thousand USD. UN Fund contribution, $10,000. This was for between the last reporting and now. After 15/11, we will disburse another one to be reported at the next AGM.
Accessibility captioning, this is as reported. Accountant fees, $4,211.57. And total bank charges, $569.18. Secretariat fees, $12,000, U.S.
And total income, $114,473.18. And we appreciate the Google funding, $30,000. And Numbers Resource Organization, NRO very consistent $50,000. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, $30,000. And new donor, ICANN Business Constituency, $2,500. And membership dues, $1,973.18. And to add a plus one to the comment earlier by Amrita, that we need to boost our membership base. This is a job for all of us
Income over expenditure is what we have left. This period is $51,251.54 US. Thank you very much. Back to you, Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Jimson. We have an audit committee. That is Brian Cut and Christopher Mondini. Can I give the floor to either of you?
>> CHRIS: Hi, this is Chris Mondini. Hope you can hear me. Pleasure to be with you. For the point of view of our audit Committee it is the straightforward task of reviewing the financial statement and the documentation of the bank accounts and assuring alignment. So in that case I'm pleased to say we have taken a look and assured alignment. And we don't have a formal report at this stage, but it is something we have added and will include in future reporting.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Chris. With that, I take it we can approve the financial statements for the year. At least I see a positive sign of approval from Vinton. No objection, so that is approved. And the next agenda item is approval of the annual budget, based upon the recommendation by the Executive Committee. But that has already been included in the report presented by Jennifer.
So I don't think we need to have a separate approval on that.
With your indulgence, as we are short of time and I notice that they are very strict with kicking you out of the room here, I would suggest a slight change in the agenda. And going through our statutory business first before we discuss fund‑raising. We have to decide on a modification of our association based upon recommendation of the Executive Committee. This is really a minor thing, but the only way we can change our bylaws is by the membership at the General Assembly.
You may or may not recall, I sent out in my invitation email that we had ‑‑ we should have done that earlier, but it was a legacy issue when we were the Internet Society assumed the role of Secretariat, that was reflected in our bylaws. You can see it here. As it was. The top half mentioned explicitly the Internet Society as a secretary for the association. We discussed it and thought as an Executive Committee, we don't need to go into that level of detail in the bylaws.
And now, we benefit from the services of north Asia. But should north Asia decide they would like not to continue, we can change and get services from somebody else, without changing the bylaws.
We hope, of course that north Asia will retain services and not mentioning them in the bylaws is by no means a slight to them. We appreciate the excellent service provided but we thought it was not necessary to be so granular in the bylaws and have a more streamlined bylaws would make it A, more elegant. And B, more practical. So I am seeing already some signs of approval. I take it then until there is an objection ‑‑ I don't think there is an objection. Approvals everywhere. This change has been approved. Thank you for that. We will change it on the website. So this is then also public.
The last secretary agenda item is the release of the obligations of the Executive Committee members. That is, again ‑‑ it is on the Swiss law requirement of each association at its General Assembly needs a release of obligations in Swiss English they call them, discharge in French. We had it in the first years called a discharge. But I think that created more confusion than anything else. I was told that the correct English expression would be release of obligations. That means that the membership agrees we have fulfilled obligations and you are approving of this.
I hope that you will again release us of our obligations. I see there is a special slide up. Special thanks to Jimson for his services as member in the last year as treasurer of the association. Do we have agreement on this? And the special mention to Jimson in the report? Yes, I see two thumbs up. Vint and approving from others. Thank you for that. We can go back to the fund‑raising agenda item. Which maybe needs more time. Then we can have also discussion, take the remaining time to discuss this item. Two Executive Committee members that are particularly active on this were Brian and Chris, and who would like to introduce the agenda item?
>> CHRIS: Thank you very much, Markus. I'll start. I'm delighted Brian is here with us also. I must start as I have another session, but thank all of the organizers there in Katowice. And everyone that has put on this amazing IGF, including scribes, interpreters, all of the team that works so hard to make it happen.
On fund‑raising, I do want to echo what others have said. Membership dues are very important. It indicates not just a financial obligation, but time and attention and involvement. As an Executive Committee member, I encourage my colleagues to take up the issue of active involvement and expanding not just to membership but activities of the membership, for example, in elections. As you have seen, my employer ICANN is proud to be a supporter.
I know we are joined in that by the numbers community that are here today. We're appreciative of the Private Sector contributions that the Business Constituency of ICANN and Google.
If you look over the years, you will have seen that IGFSA has had an incredible roster of donors that have come and go in recent times. And with Brian's help, the Executive Committee and I have really worked to prepare a plan to reinvigorate that process.
So we've spent a lot of 2021 focusing on what is the value proposition.
We here agree on the value proposition of the IGF and know well that it is the key global multistakeholder platform to evolve and raise awareness around the resource that is the Internet.
The value proposition of the IGFSA is that we can take the IGF movement and really make it ‑‑ spread it geographically. You have seen that the vast majority of our resources go to support national and regional IGFs. And I would also add to that the value is in serving as a clearinghouse and repository of good practice, good ideas, advice for success. Light touch suggestions on agenda, on content, and so all of us in the Executive Committee have varying degrees of experience in organizing events such as this. And working in this field.
And I think in addition to financial resources, we really take pride in supporting volunteers that work so hard on these events. These are really the value propositions that we communicate outward. Really, under Brian's leadership, we have gone on a listening tour to listen to donors, current and past and potential future donors to hear what they want to get out of an IGFSA and what value they would expect for their contribution.
And of course, many of our donors and contributors are in the Private Sector. But arguably, for every stakeholder category, they want the same thing. They want a demonstrated variety of attendees from diverse stakeholder Groups they want to see themes that are important to them or their organization are featured on the agenda. They do, also, in fact, I want to say there is attendance from decision‑makers, influencers, every sector. In the various geographies where there is support being provided. And for example, I will give you a concrete example, feedback that we received from domain name registries, approaching some of those companies, they said to us, can you help us to encourage that basic capacity building and training about how the Domain Name System works is a component of various IGFs that you would be supporting.
This is the kind of example of where the listening comes to us and we can make that suggestion to the NRIs that we're supporting across the community. I will say also, we do have an indirect value in these communications, because some companies and other donors we talk to say oh, we will be working globally to support these IGF directly. But for those with less resource or less time, and would like to take advantage of our help in gathering information and promoting good practice, the IGFSA stands ready to help them.
We have begun with the NRIs to ask about things like attendees. Already we have very good after IGF reporting from these events. But who has attended, what have been the key theme says, and if there is content that we can help you to locate or source or there are themes that we think donors would be interested to see covered or you and your local, national, regional, Internet community feel are very important that should be brought to their attention, again, we want to be part of this two‑way clearinghouse of information.
So that long list of companies we listened to who supported us in the past will be reaching out to you over the course of 2022. If you, an organization you know, an employer, a company, others that might want to support us, if you have an idea, share it with us at the [email protected] website. I am happy to welcome the new Executive Committee members, and I'm sure all the Committee members will be involved in effort in years to come.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. I see two hands up. Two existing donors. First Vint Cerf, then Chris Buckwood. Vint, you have the floor.
>> VINT CERF: Let me make two commitments. I will assure $100,000 in 2022, to go to the IGF operation. It will be an unrestricted grant from the Tides Foundation by way of Google. And second, I will make a similar commitment to the IGF Secretariat in a similar amount.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: This is excellent news. Thank you very much. Applause. Thank you. Chris?
>> CHRIS: I don't know how to follow that.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: I would like to follow it.
>> CHRIS: I was going to say thank you to Chris and Brian and to you Markus and other EC members. I think particularly, the question around the value proposition of the IGFSA, why IGFSA should be the mechanism through which people donate. It is something that I raised in the past. I'm really grateful to see it being addressed in such a specific way and to hear some of the thoughts that Chris had in his summary there. I think that is moving in the right direction. So yeah, I think that that is valuable. Thank you for that. I will look forward to helping to get that word out and to hopefully even more greatly diversify the number and range of those.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Chris. I think there was a hand in the room. I think I would like to ask first, Nazzar who I rudely interrupted, whether he would like to share his thoughts on fund‑raising for us.
>> ATTENDEE: Thank you Markus. I was going to run to another meeting for another organization, that is why I was urgently sharing.
I want to share about fund‑raising. We have all of the global telecoms, for example, the companies like safari.com, MTM, and voto.com, they have funding, which basically ‑‑ they call it corporate social responsibility or some sort. Because the Board of Directors of the companies, basically global people. They come from all over the world.
What I would suggest to the fund‑raising Committee is that they can approach these conversations, these telecom organizations and with the idea of forming strategic partnerships, what the IGFSA has done is form with the local organizations and tracks for the IGF that are actually doing work locally like for IGF Tanzania. So my suggestion is to reach out to them and form strategic partnerships with these guys because they are all global. And even the owners of the companies are not local individuals, but percentage ‑‑ big percentage of them come from the different countries, you know, around the world. So that would be my suggestion for fund‑raising. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. Was there another floor request in the room, Jennifer?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: That was the hand I saw. I don't believe there are any other hands in the room.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: I saw Nigel also asked for the floor?
>> Nigel: Yes, thank you, Markus, good morning, good afternoon to everyone. I also put my hand down, as you asked me, I would like to sincerely thank Chris and Brian for putting together the report, also thanks to Vint for the marvelous to come along to a General Assembly and support us in this way.
[Background conversations]
The only point I was going to make ‑‑ this is a Committee issue I suppose. We can also leverage the wonderful NRI network support. And it is great to see some of the NRIs here today to spread the word about what the IGFSA does, of course, and also to leverage any support there might be in the Regions. Thank you very much. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Is there any other comment on this agenda item fund‑raising, we discussed before but I wonder whether we should have a dedicated session with ‑‑ we mentioned this with a previous General Assembly but we never followed up on that. It was mainly due to the pandemic, that we could easily organize a call where we invite all the members on Brian storming and how best to approach it.
One issue as Anriette Esterhuysen mentioned in her remarks, the idea goes back a long time. The starting point for IGFSA was crowdfunding, but we're never good at activating crowdfunding. Maybe also with new members of the Executive Committee we have new ideas and new energy with the idea, I don't remember whether it was in Berlin or the year before in Paris, that we said we should actually involve the members more in our fund‑raising activities. So this is just an idea. Maybe we can pursue when we have our first Executive Committee meeting in the new year.
I think we are running out of time. I'm happy to move on. But they may kick us out of the room. So ... we also have any other business on the agenda.
Is there anything else anyone would like to contribute on fund‑raising or any other business. I also turn to our new Executive Committee members, Anriette Esterhuysen and Amrita Choudhury. Anything you would like to add at this stage?
>> Vint: It is Vint. A question, the IGF ‑‑ how do I say this? A proposal has been made and apparently is being executed to introduce a new layer of oversight for the IGF in the form of a high‑level panel.
Does the IGFSA have an opinion about this?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: We have never discussed this. So far, actually interpreted our bylaws rather restrictively it was to support the IGF. We never had in any case the policy discussions on which way we should go. I don't know whether any of our Executive Committee members would like to chime in on this.
>> Anriette Esterhuysen: Markus, I wasn't going to chime in on that. I think it is a good idea to have a dedicated meeting on fund‑raising and look at the crowdfunding issue again. It is a relevant issue that when raised ‑‑ I think, maybe there is space here to explore more interaction between the IGFSA and these IGF structures. I think at the moment I'm saying this also in my capacity as outgoing mag Chair. It is very much a wait and see. I think we are still very unclear about exactly how this leadership panel will operate. There is a terms of reference. It is not very detailed. I do think it is good for us to stay aware of that.
And I still need to learn, in fact, more about how IGFSA does see itself in relation to the external processes. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. As I would say, nothing prevents us from doing it. Our bylaws are flexible enough to allow us to take a position on the broader issues, structural issues. But so far, we have not done so. This is something we can definitely discuss.
With that, I think we reached the allotted end of our time. I'm not sure how flexible the room management is. Jennifer do we have an idea.
>> Vint: There is already a note in the chat saying get the hell out of the room.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: I should have seen that. Thank you for putting it in clear terms. Let's get the hell out of the room. With that, I thank you all for your participation, in particular I welcome the new Executive Committee members and I would like to once again extend our special thanks to Vinton for his promised generous contribution to IGFSA. With that, the General Assembly 21 is closed. Thank you, good‑bye.
Take care.