[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposal to eliminate price caps on .org domain names

[Glenda Wolin]

As a member of a small nonprofit with a website geared to keeping members
and other interested parties informed about our issues and activities, I
urge you not to eliminate price caps on the .org top-level domain.

Many nonprofits operate on a shoestring budget while trying to benefit
society. Attempting to treat the groups that use this domain the same as
businesses with millions of dollars to spend is a false equivalence. We do
different work for different purposes.

My nonprofit exists to educate and empower people to participate in their
democracy. We do this in a number of ways: We go into the community, mostly
underserved areas, to register voters. We produce unbiased guides that
include all candidates, no matter how minor, and have them answer identical
questions about issues, so people can compare what they have to say and
become educated voters. We hold candidate forums that, again, include all
the candidates because we don't want someone deciding which ones are worthy
of being heard by the voters and which ones are not. We do not endorse
candidates or parties. We also hold forums on issues of importance to the
community with expert panels discussing their areas of expertise as related
to the issues. On our website, in addition to announcing what is coming up,
during the state legislative session we inform our readers about upcoming
legislation and provide ways for them to reach their legislators to let
them know how they feel.

We do all these things and more without a single paid staffer -- we are all
volunteers. Our members pay dues and we do some fundraising. That's how we
pay for everything we do. If our yearly domain fee skyrocketed, we might
face eliminating our website.

I'm not speaking just for our organization, but for many, many others, some
of which surely have even less funding than we do. Nonprofits doing good
works have to mean more than someone earning more money on domain names.
Perhaps you can require proof of nonprofit status for .org rates that are
capped at at lower rate. But please do not price small nonprofits out of
the ability to have a websites.

Thank you for your consideration.

Glenda Wolin
San Antonio, TX
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