[ARIN-consult] What do the ASN fees go to?

Mon May 10 16:15:46 EDT 2021

Adam -

Indeed, slightly off topic (but quite understandable given a discussion of fee changes that raises overall organizational revenue…  :-)

ARIN constantly needs to balance investment in organization (i.e. the staff and capital necessary to maintain and develop new services) against the need to contain costs and minimize fees.   ARIN does not automatically adjust fees annually (as some other organizations do) and rather periodically seeks to adjust fees as necessary to cover its expenses.  Having noted that, there’s definitely quite a bit of judgement involved in achieving the right balance for the organization.

To that end, may I suggest a couple of things that might help in this regard?

1)  Run for the ARIN Board.   First and foremost, it is the ARIN’s Board that review each year's activity plan and budget in order to set the priorities.  There have been years that we’ve cut back programs and trimmed staff as a result, and there’s years that we’ve surged in order to meet emerging community demands.   Ultimately, it comes down to the Board to determine the best balance.

2)  If one doesn’t have time to run for the Board, you can help inform the consideration of the candidates through the ARIN Board Nominee Questionnaire, which I note the NomCom is presently seeking additional questions for possible inclusion - https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-announce/2021-May/002535.html

3)  Finally, stay informed and get your organization to vote in the annual election for candidates whose views match your own  - https://www.arin.net/participate/oversight/elections/

One of the things that is quite exciting about the proposed fee change is the potential for having even more (and predominantly smaller) organizations now helping shape ARIN going forward, as the movement to a single fee schedule will open up ARIN Membership and our elections to those organizations that want to be more involved in ARIN governance.

 Also, I will note that the ARIN Board is already quite interested in best practices for ARIN's governance, and has convened a special ARIN Board Governance Working Group (GWG) to consider governance best practices and their application to the organization - https://www.arin.net/about/welcome/board/committees/charters/#charter-for-the-arin-board-governance-working-group

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 10 May 2021, at 3:39 PM, Adam Thompson <athompso at athompso.net<mailto:athompso at athompso.net>> wrote:

Going off-topic slightly...

There is a trend worldwide for NGOs, Charities, and other non-profits to steadily increase overhead (notably including executive compensation) to unsustainable levels.  In this industry in particular we have the unfortunate example of Nominet.

I certainly don't expect John to disclose his entire compensation package, particularly on a public mailing list, and I am *NOT* saying this applies to ARIN - I have no idea if it does or not, and making such an accusation would require a ton more research and concrete evidence, none of which I care enough to do at the moment.  (I'm pretty sure John doesn't take home the entire $4M line item!)

HOWEVER, if there's a way to proactively prevent ARIN from spiraling out of control (à la Nominet), that's an interesting idea.  I don't think it needs to be addressed during the current consultation over fees.  I don't have the impression that most stakeholders would support such a large change in scope at this late point in the consultation.

Especially since I don't know of any canned examples, best practices, etc. in this area that could be readily applied, I am not prepared to start discussing details on that the day this consultation closes!

I wouldn't mind seeing thoughts on this the _next_ time ARIN fees change.

For the record, while I'm not exactly happy about the new fees, I think the change is... reasonable.  I can't think of any other set of changes that both meets ARIN's operational needs AND would be better accepted by the community than this set.

-Adam

On 2021-05-10 14:11, Steve Noble wrote:

Per the latest 990N available (2018) 18% (4MM) of the money went to executives.  ARIN is a non-profit.  John's compensation is the highest (obviously).

Notable expenses        Percent of total expenses
Executive compensation  $3,979,666      18.1%

William Herrin wrote on 5/10/21 11:39 AM:

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 9:47 AM John Curran <jcurran at arin.net><mailto:jcurran at arin.net> wrote:

As noted earlier, ARIN provides many operational services for all of the resources in the registry – and these services are provided even for number resources that have no requests pending or when there are requests pending to change information but that lack proper documentation.

Hi John,

Even if you include the policy process with the list and meetings (in
addition to the registry itself) in the "services" provided to an AS
number registrant, it seems to me that less than 10% of the end-user
AS number fees are spent on services with the rest spent on ARIN
overhead. If you disagree, I'd love to see a breakout of the
accounting as you figure it.

Perhaps there should be a cap on the portion of any fee which can be
applied to ARIN overhead costs? At the least, that might encourage
ARIN to keep overhead costs from rising out of proportion with the
direct services to individual registrants.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

--
Thank you,
Steven

_______________________________________________
ARIN-Consult
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the ARIN Consult Mailing
List (ARIN-consult at arin.net<mailto:ARIN-consult at arin.net>).
Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at:
https://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-consult Please contact the ARIN Member Services
Help Desk at info at arin.net<mailto:info at arin.net> if you experience any issues.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-consult/attachments/20210510/dea332ee/attachment-0001.htm>