ISOC Document
Title:      ISOC Directions
Author(s):  G. Huston
Date:       2000-06-27
Committee:  BoT
Document:   00-01
Revision:   3
Supersedes:
Status:     Draft for Comment
Maintainer: G. Huston
Access:     Unrestricted

Potential Directions for ISOC

To quote Don Heath, the President of ISOC, on the topic of ISOC's status:

"We continue to get better, but we are still existing on a day-to-day basis."

Funding is our major concern right now, and in this background paper it is appropriate to commence an analysis of potential directions for ISOC by reviewing our capacity base from the perspective of funding support for the Society. Following this analysis the paper will examine a number of potential initiatives for ISOC and make a number of recommendations as to further actions that will materially assist ISOC's position.

A. FUNDING ISOC

The past three years has been a tough period for ISOC. We have been working on a day-to-day basis across most of this period, spending much of our efforts in continuing to keep the funding levels up to the point of sustaining our existing mode of operation. The side-effect of this is that we are currently without the financial wherewithal to undertake major programs on our own initiative.

There are four major potential sources of funding support for a body such as ISOC:

• individual membership subscriptions
• corporate membership / sponsorship
• activity-based revenue
• institutional and foundational support

1. Individual membership

Membership levels continue to remain below 10,000 members, and have remained at this level for some years. Membership raises approximately $220,000 annually (some 15% of ISOC revenues) and ISOC's administrative costs relating to individual membership total some $200,000. While membership levels have not dropped off, this is due to a relatively high churn rate, where we have a membership retention level of some 40%. We are attracting new members at a level of some 4,500 per year, but losing in membership renewals a comparable figure.

There is probably a good reason for this relatively low membership level for a global Internet-related membership body, and, to paraphrase the Swedish Chapter of ISOC on this same topic, we appeal on the basis of quality rather than quantity. Our individual membership tends to concentrate in the professional area, particularly in the areas of public policy interests and, to a lesser extent, in the technical professional areas.

Popularizing our membership offering has been considered a number of times, and we have been, to date, unable to generate a popularist general proposition that would enlist membership levels in the hundreds of thousands to millions of individuals. Of course there is also the side effect that such a large generalist society would have to undergo considerable metamorphosis in the process, and become necessarily need to be focused on popularist issues with mass appeal. The observation that can be made is that ISOC is not well positioned to undertake such a metamorphosis, nor would the current membership constituency be comfortable with such a change, and we can expect considerable resistance from our existing channels of support if we were to vigorously pursue this path. The other observation is that the Internet is populated at present with a very positive mass media positioning - there are very few 'bad news' stories out there that can be turned into positions that generate mass appeal through populist activities. Creating a popularist cause requires a small set of simple messages and an associated threat that without popularist activities there will be negative consequences to every individual. This is a challenging proposition for the Internet of today. The issues of the digital divide and the progressive disenfranchising of many minority groupings of today's society have not struck a responsive chord as a matter of deep concern in today's media. Similarly, issues of individual privacy and integrity of personal communication and freedom of expression are often seen from a popularist perspective as being marginal issues with high complexity. Popularist bodies also have the risk of becoming short term issues-based bodies, rather than long term institutions, as their agenda tends to be very narrowly focused. From this perspective it would appear that a single body operating on a worldwide level of individual membership and offering a very general popularist value proposition to each member is an unlikely direction. Accordingly individual membership subscriptions cannot be seen as the sole major future source of revenue for ISOC in the near term.

Structurally the chapter structure appears to offer individuals the greatest level of involvement and benefit, and the direction of chapters as the support mechanisms for individual members is one that we need to continue to develop. In so doing we also need to recognize that as the greatest level of benefit is local to the chapter, the major revenue flow from individuals to ISOC will be directed to the local chapter, rather than to the ISOC Secretariat. It is reasonable to predict the existing membership subscription revenue sharing model will alter towards greater levels of revenue to the chapters in the coming years.

2. Corporate Sponsorship

Our efforts in this area have been adequate to date, in that corporate sponsorship is our major basis for funding our operations, and we have had adequate funds to operate the Society thanks to this support.

The profile of corporate support lies generally with large corporates, and we are to some extent reliant on continued buoyancy in western economies to sustain this program.

Our major asset in terms of corporate funding probably lies in ISOC's role in the Internet Standards process and our role as funder of various Standards activities. While other standards bodies use a process of corporate membership in the body itself, the IETF uses a somewhat different approach, and ISOC effectively becomes the surrogate membership vehicle for organizations to support the overall standards effort.

This is a powerful story, and there is a reasonable case to be made that if the identification of the flow of sponsorship monies directly into IETF Standards Activities were more evident, it would be even easier to broaden this program to include the majority of corporations who send individuals to IETF meetings.

In the same way as the IETF has successfully engaged into the European and some of the Pacific/Asian sectors, it would be possible to link that to broader corporate support drawn more heavily from those sectors as well.

3. Activity-based funding

Many societies draw revenue from conferences and publications. While ISOC's publications have not been a substantial revenue generator, the conference activity was initially a relatively major contributor to ISOC's total revenue.

This position has been reversed in recent years, due to the appearance of industry-based conferences and seminars on every aspect of the Internet and in almost every market sector. INET conferences, as a generalist semi-technical semi-policy conference with emphasis on content rather than a trade show does not have mass market appeal, and we are in the uncomfortable position of having to stage the conference with a level of prominence and promotion where the expenses tend to run at a level comparable, or greater than conference revenue.

Notable is the NDSS conference, which has been a more modest undertaking with a strong specialist appeal. Relative to its expenditure levels this conference has generated consistent revenues in recent years. This is a potential indicator that if ISOC is to continue to structure conferences as a revenue positive activity it should look at smaller conferences with more immediate and specific content appeal to a particular market sector.

4. Institutional and Foundational Support

Our efforts to engage with various foundations have not been successful to date, although there remain some prospects that may prove beneficial for ISOC.

It would assist our efforts in this area if we did have a clear and intended social objective that we could associate with foundational funding, and this perhaps is an area that may be worth developing in the futures, but it must be borne in mind that this is a high risk activity, in that the effort to interest foundational support may not be one that comes to fruition to the scale required to be of material benefit to the Society.

The conclusion here is that at present our major channel of funding remains strongly embedded in the corporate sector, and there is no immediate likelihood of change in this in the coming 2 - 3 years.

B. ISOC's STRUCTURE AND POTENTIAL CHANGES

With this in mind, the next question is whether we are presently well-structured to reflect both our revenue base and our activity sectors, and what changes could be contemplated by ISOC.

Firstly, lets review our institutional assets:

ISOC Secretariat. Our major resource in terms of staff resources consists of a President / CEO, and the roles of membership administration, conference and workshop administration, publications and promotions, fund raising and administration. I would include within this grouping the Vice President roles, as they are defined as officers of the President rather than of the Board of Trustees. The current level of resources in the Secretariat are adequate to maintain, for the most part, membership-related activities as they currently exist, but we need to recognize that the Secretariat does not have adequate resources to undertake programs which are directed towards higher value membership services or greater levels of administrative or program support to our Chapters and their development.

Advisory Council. This body has matured into an excellent policy forum, and there are some real strengths and commitment within this body.

Chapters Council - formed earlier this year, this is a resource which at this stage is one of potential, with the scope of its role yet to be determined. It should be noted that at present only some 40% of our individual members are listed as chapter members in an ISOC chapter, and our membership retention rate is at some 40% of membership. This implies that if we were to place greater emphasis on chapters in servicing individual members we will need to undertake some significant effort in this area to assist chapters to be more effective in recruitment and retention of members.

Secondly, it is worth canvassing some possible areas of change in this structure that could be of benefit to ISOC.

1.   The Internet Standards activity of ISOC could be strengthened at the corporate level - while the IETF does not charge membership fees on the same scale as the ITU or ETSI or similar, the benefits of the IETF to corporates far outweigh the current costs each active corporation pays in terms of meeting fees.

One potential option is for ISOC to launch a program specifically centered around corporate support for the IETF functions, allowing not only continuation of the RFC-Editor contract and the IESG and IAB telechats, but also to expand this role to meet the changing requirements from the IETF. One feature of such a corporate support program is that it could be self-sustaining, and operate largely independently (financially and logistically) from other ISOC activities.

To ensure that such a program is visibly focused on the Standards activities, it may be of value to separately badge this activity and separately managing the administrative and reporting structures so that corporate members can be assured that their membership is indeed directed towards the IETF standards activities.

2.   Chapters - It seems that on the membership front we do have a committed social agenda membership and the chapters are critical to this. An international membership body cannot survive without local involvement - chapters provide this.

One potential change is that the ISOC membership structure be devolved to chapters, and the ISOC membership internationally be built around a union of chapters, rather than chapters being local collections of ISOC members.

This reversal of role places more emphasis on the chapters to provide the wherewithal to sustain individual memberships in ISOC, including the administrative functions, membership programs, member benefits and the undertaking of locally relevant activities.

The union of chapters through the Chapters Council would allow chapters to embark on collaborative programs with pooling of resources, but the scope of this activity, and the associate funding would be the responsibility of the chapters themselves.

The intent of such an approach would be to place control of membership finances at the disposal of the chapters, and allow the local chapter to have access to the majority of membership funds. This would mean that the worldwide society would be a relatively light administrative role, supporting the Chapters Council, and implementing common policy over chapter chartering and similar.

3.   The ISOC Corporate Advisory Council has taken on a role concentrating on policy-based issues, largely due to increased awareness in the corporate sector of the need to consider such matters in the increasingly deregulated communications sector. We are facing an unprecedented wave of de-regulation in the communications industry, and with it comes an increasing need for corporates to take a more active stance on a wide range of policy-related issues.

One potential change is to propose that the ISOC Advisory Council work with a number of established industry/ public Internet policy programs and take an active role in hosting policy forums and the Internet.

Funding for such program can be structured along a combination of both activity-based programs (policy seminars) and public sector funding for initiatives in self-regulatory policy environments, as well as tapping the resources of those foundations who wish to position themselves within the public policy arena with respect to the evolution of the Internet.

4.   ISOC Forums. The remaining areas of ISOC are positioned as activities, including the INET and NDSS conferences, and the ISTF, as well as training workshops.

One potential change is for such activities to be structured within an ISOC Forum area, operating along activity-based funding lines, rather than as a membership benefit program. This structuring would allow the forum staff to be more flexible in responding to sector needs with ISOC-badged activities on an as-required basis.

Such a flexible structure would allow ISOC to co-sponsor events of various forms, such as operator forums like APRICOT and AFNOG, policy forums as well as subject-specialized events.

Structurally, these potential changes all have a common theme: each component activity would operate in a manner which is intended to be financially self-sustaining, and closely relate participation in any activity to immediate benefit, making the task of generating funding support easier in each case.

C. THE PROCESS OF CHANGE

There are a number of ways in which a body such as ISOC can undertake internal change. These are through evolution and gradual transition, through restructuring and reallocation of resources and finally through re-positioning of the society. These scenarios for change are applied to ISOC's position in this section.

1 - EVOLUTIONARY

An evolutionary process would see ISOC increasing available funds, mainly through re-doubling ISOC's organisational membership recruitment efforts. The risk in such an effort is that it would not allow ISOC to position its resources appropriately for development. ISOC will continue to spend much of our staff resources inappropriately, while neglecting the critical areas requiring development. The risk of this is that this will lead ISOC to being a niche player.

2 - RESTRUCTURING

Reorganize resources and efforts by redirecting our resources by putting more resource on programs, white papers, PR, etc. For example, ISOC would hire a Chapter/Member Administration manager, as well as automating a number of existing processes where feasible. The intent of this is to redploy effort without requiring significant additional funds, thereby allowing ISOC to 'get a leg up' to more initiatives and greater financial stability.

3- REPOSITIONING

Reposition ISOC as primarily a corporate member organization (without individual members or with individual members driven and managed solely through chapters). The risk here is that ISOC would become an industry entity and have few distinguishing features from any similar industry entity, and no solid industry agenda.

Irrespective of the general direction chosen, opening up this process with such a frank assessment of ISOC's position and direction stands a risk of generating the public impression of the leadership of the organization reacting with some lack of coherence in direction. We need to manage this process as part of the Board's mission to continuously evaluate strategic direction and ensure the discussion is not interpreted as seeking approval for a pre-determined set of actions, but one of seeking input into potential directions for ISOC.

We also need to be aware that if it is determined to proceed with changes to ISOC along the lines envisaged here, it must be remembered that this proposal contains a broad set of changes, and embarking on this as a single effort does have significant risks of failure. ISOC's funding position is such that the major effort remains one of servicing the corporate membership program as a necessary means of servicing monthly expenditures. To reduce this effort in any way stands a strong risk of placing ISOC into a situation of financial insolvency. It may be prudent to evaluate such basic structural changes as a sequence of incremental steps, allowing some flexibility in terms of adoption in order to minimize the risks to the viability of ISOC at each step.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS

The recommendations here are intended as guidelies to ISOC's CEO for implementation, and do not extend into fine levels of detail. The endorsement of the Board would be appropriate in order to proceed with any of these recommendations, as there are inherant policy and fiscal implications within each of these recommendations.

D.1 Provide resources to support Organizational members, specifically including supporting the Corporate Advisory Council's activities, initiating programs that engage corporate members in ISOC functions and activities, and undertaking corporate membership recruitment programs

The strategic objective for this effort can be established in terms of defining specific funding objectives, with secondary objectives of improving retention levels of corporate members, upgrading of members.

D.2 Provide dedicated resources to support Chapters and Individual members, and charter this group to work with the Chapters Council with the objective of making all chapters able to provide a basic level of member services. The strategic objectives for this effort would include raising member retention levels, reducing per member service costs and increasing chapter membership levels.

D.3 Provide resources for a public relations program for ISOC. The initial thrusts of this program would be in providing a channel from ISOC activities to the mainstream media, with material and positions provided from the ISTF and the IETF. Additional objectives would include establishing a clearly visible relationship between ISOC and the IETF supporting functions, and enhance existing IETF services following consultation with the IETF. A review by the IAB of ISOC's IETF support activities would assist in ensuring that this effort is well understood and supported by the IETF. The strategic objectives for this effort would include a metric of ISOC's positioning in relevant media, as well as a metric of the functions performed by ISOC in support of the IETF.

D.4 Alter the focus of the conference program to increase the number of partnered conferences with particular constituencies and specific focus in terms of content and attendance. The strategic objectives for this effort are to increase the leverage of ISOC's conference and education resources, ensuring that future activities are undertaken with reduced financial risk to ISOC, reduced call on ISOC funds through advances, and reduced direct resource expenditure and with a greater empahsis on positive financial outcomes.