Internet Society Chapters 

Form a Chapter

Primer for Creating a Local ISOC Chapter

Written by Prof. Wayne Spivak, New York City ISOC Chapter
Reprinted from OnTheInternet, March/April 1998 (with revisions by ISOC Secretariat)

• Ask the Internet Society Secretariat to send a letter on your behalf to current and former ISOC members in the area to be served  by the proposed chapter. (Note: To protect the privacy of its  members, ISOC does not provide contact information to people wanting to form a chapter.) You can prepare the letter, or ISOC will use one of its own. If the latter, be sure to send ISOC the contact information you wish them to use (including phone number, if calls are acceptable). A minimum of 25 ISOC individual members is required for formation of a chapter.
• Create a mailing list of those who contact you and keep prospective members informed.
• Set a date for a first meeting, and create an agenda. At the meeting, set down the mission statement of your chapter, such as the chapter's ongoing goals in education, communication, access, or whatever may be the major concerns of the individuals who are meeting.
• Create a charter committee and a subcommittee-which may be one and the same and which will be responsible for creating the chapter's bylaws.
• Name your chapter. Believe it or not, this is important. It tells members and prospective members who you are.
• Designate the region your chapter will serve.
• The charter committee's job is now done until the bylaw committee reports with proposed chapter bylaws.
• Develop a formula on how you will elect your first set of officers and board members. This will make the process easier. Remember that the first round of elections will be unusual, in that they will be somewhat blind because nobody really knows anyone yet.

  The bylaws committee has a tough job. My advice is to borrow from both ISOC and other established  chapters the parts of their bylaws that meet your local needs. As Albert Einstein once said, "Real genius is  knowing how to improve upon someone else's work." Take this advice to heart because it's always easier to borrow than to create. And be sure to give attribution when necessary.

• Use e-mail to float a draft document between members. Use face-to-face meetings when possible so that the inflections of speech and personality can work to achieve consensus.
• Seek the approval and counsel of ISOC: the society has to approve your bylaws before you can be chartered. It is a waste of time to bring your membership in to vote on bylaws that might get rejected by ISOC.
• E-mail the final proposed bylaws to all of the members on the mailing list, and include a meeting date and time. Ask for commentary.
• At the first meeting of your chapter, the following items should be discussed and voted:
  • Any legal documentation needing approval: ISOC-NY got incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation, so we needed to sign the articles of incorporation.
  • Approval of bylaws
• After approval of the bylaws, submit them to ISOC for recognition and your charter.
• Nominations for officers and board members should be conducted. Election of at least one individual in the nominating committee should be held so someone can run the election. Set your next meeting date. You now have a chapter.
• The next few months are crucial to the chapter's survival. After elections, your new board and officers must create the following:
  • mission statement to be part of the bylaws
  • strategic plan outlining what the chapter wants to do in broad strokes
  • tactical plan describing how each item of the strategic plan will be carried out
  • financial plan as the budget for the chapter, so you'll have an idea of how much money needs to be infused into the organization to meet goals
• For more information on existing chapters, chapters currently in formation, or forming your own chapter, see http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/application/.