Campaign for dotNGO Heats Up

The campaign for global control of a new dotNGO Internet domain for charities is heating up with two Not for Profits joining forces in an application to control the new domain.

Dr. Victoria Harris, the founder of the UK charity Article 25, and which had intended to compete for the .NGO domain against the US-based Not for Profit, Public Interest Registry (PIR), has now reversed her position and is supporting the PIR bid.

The two previously competing organisations have been calling on Australian NFPs for their expressions of interest to join the campaign for the rights to operate a new dotNGO domain.

Dr Harris’ website says that she has joined with PIR, which will be funding the bid application process and the running of the new dotNGO domain if it makes a successful application to the domain name governing body, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

She says her dotNGO campaign is an independent, community-based initiative, raising awareness and lobbying for support to ensure the NGO sector controls its own TLD (top level domain).

The PIR, which already manages the dotORG domain, has applied for the creation and management of the dotNGO domain that will be available exclusively to NGOs, NFPs and the community sector worldwide.

Pro Bono Australia News revealed the battle to run the dotNGO domain in February. 

Dr Harris said: “The main aim is that the new TLD will improve security and potentially reduce online fraud in the sector and become a global hub for the sector”.

Pro Bono Australia News has been advised that another application has been made by Domain Venture Partners, an investment fund, which is intending to go ahead as a commercial "standard" bidder, head to head with the community bid.

PIR Senior Manager, Thuy LeDinh, says his organisation believes that gathering community support for the dotNGO application is a critical component for their application and that they are thrilled with what they have received to date.

“We are thankful that Dr. Harris, along with other organizations, are raising awareness of .NGO and PIR by driving traffic to the www.ngoTLD.org site to learn more about our initiative,” he said.

“We feel very strongly that our approach to dotNGO, which is a community application versus a standard application, is the right approach for this community.”

“We have had tremendous support and interactions with the Australian Not for Profits.

“We are getting expressions of interest and letters of support from Australian NGOs as well as NGOs in other parts of the world, all of which see tremendous value in their own unique and global domain, which can bring all NGOs together in a single address space on the web.”

ICANN says the new domain name program will greatly expand the current 22 Top-Level Domains such as dotcom, dotgov and dotnet to include almost any word or name.

dotORG is already the home for millions of Not for Profit websites, including charitable, artistic, scientific, personal, educational, social, cultural and religious sites worldwide.

PIR says it receives $6 per year from every registered dotorg. ICANN says the deadline to register in the TLD Application System is March 29.