Opening an account for NPOC, NCUC and NCSG in Estonia

[Stephanie Perrin]

I think this is an excellent item for the Finance Committee to discuss and deal with, so I am tagging the co-chairs.  Personally, I think it is a lot of money when we actually have very little money.  I would also like to know, from a regulatory perspective, how secure this e-registry is, who backs it, and how easily the government could walk away from it.  But kudos to you for doing all this research!

We had a lengthy discussion on the implications of becoming a non-profit entity at the last FC meeting.  Perhaps you might wish to look that transcript over and let us know if we missed anything Raoul!  Having just advanced the money from my personal funds for the web contract (2430. USD) I have a keen interest in the outcomes here.  In the meantime we are limping along with the low cost options, involving risk for leaders who have to reach into their wallets. Thanks

cheers Stephanie

On 2019-01-05 18:22, Raoul Plommer wrote:
Dear all,

I've tried unsuccesfully opening an account for NPOC here in Finland and what it really comes down to, are the restrictions of having account owners that are based in Finland and every time they would be changed, they'd have to come over to Finland to do so. The same goes for the NCUC's current account.

Now, I think we (me and Tapani) have found a solution to our problems and it is such that I will get a e-citizenship in Estonia, register the C's and the SG in Estonia and then open the bank account to each of them separately in person. We'll probably need another few people to take e-residencies as well, to share the responsibility and accountability of said accounts and the e-residency costs 100€ per person. https://apply.gov.ee/

None of our SG's organisational structure is officially recognised anywhere but inside ICANN - I think we should change that and register in a country that is actually a lot more lenient than Finland or USA, for example.

https://www.estoniancompanyregistration.com/nonprofit-organisation-registration-in-estonia

The most essential difference to most countries is that Estonia allows change of authorised users on bank accounts to people with e-residency ID, and this change can be done in any consulate of Estonia in the world.

All I would need, is the boat trip to Tallinn and back and one night in a local hotel. This would be less than 200€ in total.

200€ for e-residency for two people, per account, so 600€.

We'd also need to cover the costs of registering our organisations in Estonia, which will probably make things easier, and I think all three can be registered for less that 200€ in total.

So... We'd need about a thousand euros + 5 people wanting to put their names as the account holders. What do you guys think? If we discuss this further, I might actually get all the details together by Kobe.

I think it would be crucial to finally get our organisational infrastructure together and be able to change people as the account holders. Now the situation is really inflexible and reliant on a very few people with access to the accounts.

Once we register the organisations as not-for-profits, we could also finally get an government ID to start using Google's nonprofit benefits which are really quite numerous. Same goes for Dropbox for example, they give 30% discount.

-Raoul

P.S. While I was searching, I found this a record of the CSG having a nonprofit register in the USA. I found that somewhat surprising.

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