Opening an account for NPOC, NCUC and NCSG in Estonia

[David Cake]

I am happy to become an e-resident of Estonia at me own expense if it will help, though I am unlikely to be able to travel to Talinn soon. It seems a useful work around to the practical issues of having an account for a globally distributed organisation. 

Of course any such non-profit would need it’s own charter, with goals and objectives that very clearly tied it to supporting the goal of the corresponding ICANN entity, and rules that allowed the entity to appoint the non-profit office holders. 

David

> On 7 Jan 2019, at 6:42 am, Raphaël Beauregard-Lacroix <rbeauregardlacroix at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> hi all,
> 
> Stephanie: EE gov't backs it. It can walk away from it, to the extent that the legislature/executive would decide to close down the whole thing. Highly unlikely but not impossible. Also any given bank we would do business with could decide to close down its association/cooperation with e-citizenship.
> 
> As for security, as far as I know, its based on the fact that when you have services linked to that identity, you have to use card reader+card+pin in order to get access to the service in question (like banking). The whole registry is probably encrypted and I'm sure there is some blockchain involved somewhere, but I am far from having enough knowledge to provide any meaningful opinion on that.
> 
> I happen to already be e-resident in EE (not for any useful purpose so far, though...) 
> 
> If I'm not mistaken though we would need to incorporate something in Estonia; I don't know Estonian law enough to know what kind of legal entities exist there, and which ones are open for e-residents, distance banking, etc., and if any of them serve our not-for-profit purposes. There is certainly at least one, my issue is more with its "compatbility" with the whole e-citizenship thing.
> 
> Also we still have the problem that there is a cost to becoming e-resident. Less costly than a plane trip for sure, but there is still one, that some volunteers would need to fork out at some point, without it being refunded by ICANN I suppose. 
> 
> Finally, and maybe more importantly, we have yet to resolve the very basic question of whether to incorporate into anything at all.
> 
> After our discussion on call a few days ago, I see less and less purpose; we do not handle any money as NCSG besides adminsitrative fees related to membership management and travel support, money which is in the end ICANN's own. 
> 
> In that sense, incorporation is a workaround ICANN's own inability to provide us with some form of structure which satisfy our rather limited needs, and it exposes us (volunteers) to legal risk (maybe thin, but not non-existent) and loss of volunteer's time into the management, and eventually own's money, of the whole thing. 
> 
> I'm willing to be convinced otherwise though, and if there is no other solution but incorporation, then I think that the Estonian solution might be the best one, if it is indeed possible to combine not-for-profit structure with the whole e-residence, e-banking and every other e-something services the EE gov't offers.
> 
> Have a nice day,
> 
> Best,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2019 at 3:03 PM Stephanie Perrin <stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca <mailto:stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca>> wrote:
> 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/ <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 <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.
>> 
>> <image.png>
>> 

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