Page History

Welcome Community Leaders,

The Special Budget Request is a dedicated budget process for the various structures within the ICANN organization:

• SO - Supporting Organizations
• AC - Advisory Connittees
• SG - Stakeholder Groups 

This special process is to let the community set aside a dedicated budget for specific activities that are not already included in the recurring ICANN budget. 

The Timeline of these budget requests are desynchronized from the publication of the overall ICANN budget on purpose to allow an early consideration for approval.

The process for the Fiscal Year ending June 2014 is as follows:

1. We will be using the Community Ad-Hoc Wiki space as the interface for the submission and evaluation of the community special budget requests.
   Individual Wiki pages have been created for each SO, AC and SG.
2. Please complete the attached request template for each individual new resource or activity that your community is requesting.
   The form has been designed to give you an opportunity to describe in detail the actual scope of the activity you propose, how it relates to the current Strategic Plan, and how the funds are to be implemented.
3. We ask that you give consideration to the number of requests and to the priority of the requests prior to submitting them.
   By noting the respective priorities of your requests it will make it easier to evaluate the requests from various community groups.
   Once completed please save all your requests in your wiki workspace, that will complete your submission.
4. Though all requests will be examined and processed, the requests will be processed in the order they are received: the earlier your requests enter the process, the more opportunity we collectively will have for review and consideration.
   The Wiki workspace will allow us to post comments/questions and utilize the interactive nature of its platform to strengthen the application process.
   The Finance staff will schedule in a timely manner a review call with each Community group for further clarifications and to finalize the requests.
5. A placeholder “additional requests" envelope will be included in the Draft Operating Budget for a total of $500k for all requests.
   This is the amount that everyone should have in mind when submitting requests.
   Being a placeholder, we may decide, through the selection process, to change the amount of the envelope suggested for additional requests, dependent upon what conclusions the selection process reaches.
   This approach will allow us to have a special vote by the Board by the Beijing Meeting in April 2013 to approve the selected requests so the implementation timeline of the selected projects will not be impacted by a decision in late June.
6. All completed requests should be posted in the Community wiki workspace no later than 8 March 2013 to give the Finance staff ample time to review, ask follow up questions to the requester and then consolidate the requests and submit them to the ICANN Executive Staff for review. The Executive team will then discuss the requests with the ICANN Board Finance Committee before submitting a special budget resolution to the Board at the Beijing Meeting 4-7 April 2013.

Additionally, for newly approved travel support, community leaders will still need to comply with the already established process of filling out the ICANN Constituency Travel template prior to travel to an ICANN meeting or approved alternate meeting.

Our Finance Team is committed to the transparency of the objectives, outcomes and expenditures for each funded request. 
Detailed implementation plans and finance tracking of each activity and expenditure will greatly improve the likelihood that we will achieve that transparency goal.  
All approved requests will be located within a “Community Support Services” budget category and will be documented, tracked and expensed.  

DRAFTThank you.