Summary

  • Internet Society's 2026 Action Plan budgets $329,000 for the Board of Trustees, but that aggregate does not identify travel, trustee reimbursements or any other component.
  • Policies revised in July require disclosure and approval of non-Board funding, custody of supporting records and quarterly reporting of overall spending. The named recipients are internal: the Chair, CEO, Treasurer, Director of Governance and Board.
  • There is no evidence that a trustee received improper funding or that a control failed. A public funding receipt could reconcile purpose class, authority, state and annual totals without exposing itineraries, receipts or personal data.

One number reaches the public

The 2026 Action Plan sets out Internet Society's budget in thousands of US dollars. Total revenue is 41,199, total expenses are 38,199, and one line reads Board of Trustees 329. That makes the public Board budget $329,000.

It is a useful number because it places Board activity inside the organisation's financial plan. It is also a narrow number. The table does not say how much belongs to meetings, governance staff, airfare, hotels, insurance, advisers, technology or reimbursements. It certainly does not say that $329,000 was paid to trustees.

That distinction is the foundation of responsible scrutiny. An aggregate budget proves planned capacity. It does not prove a transaction, recipient, approval or outcome. Treating the whole line as personal benefit would be false. Treating the line as complete public accountability would be equally weak.

The governing policies show why. Internet Society has built a more detailed internal record than the budget table reveals. The public gap is not a lack of rules. It is the absence of a join between those rules and the aggregate readers can see.

July changed the control path

On 6 July 2026, the Board approved a revised Travel Policy for Trustees by unanimous written consent. The resolution says the revision clarifies non-Board travel, creates a specific process for Chair travel, modernises reimbursement standards, improves receipt requirements, adds dual approval and addresses long transit stays. It became effective immediately.

Four days later, Resolution 2026-14 revised three governance policies and reaffirmed a fourth. The Trustee Payment Disclosure Policy received what the resolution calls a minor consistency update and also took effect immediately.

The current payment policy defines funding broadly enough to matter: payments, reimbursements or expense sponsorship from Internet Society for an activity not directly related to attending a Board meeting. A trustee must disclose the type and rationale to the Chair by email. The Chair then discloses the details to the Board. Nominal-value sponsorship, such as an ISOC dinner or reception alongside an event the trustee attends at personal cost, is excluded.

That is disclosure. It creates an accountable internal recipient and tells the full Board. But it is not a public disclosure obligation. The policy does not require publication of the amount, decision, activity class, approvers, payment state or annual aggregate.

The 2017 version makes the change visible. It required the trustee to email the Board directly. The 2026 text routes the first message to the Chair and preserves Board receipt through the Chair. There is no basis to say that the revision reduced oversight. The narrower point is that both versions use disclosure for an internal Board control.

The travel rule is more than a promise

The Travel Policy adds separation of duties. For non-Board travel, a trustee discloses the type and rationale to the Chair and CEO, copies the Director of Governance and obtains Chair and CEO approval. The Director keeps the approval documentation.

Different lanes receive different treatment. A co-located event needs written justification and advance approval. Travel as an official representative must be considered with its financial effect. CEO-requested travel is allowed, but the policy says the annual amount for a trustee must be quite limited to avoid a perception of conflict. Other travel can require Board approval.

The Chair cannot approve their own travel through the ordinary route. The CFO verifies available funds, the request is disclosed to the Board, and the Treasurer and CEO approve it. The Director of Governance retains the documentation.

These are meaningful controls. They identify decision-makers, split authority and preserve evidence. A public account should acknowledge them instead of implying that an unpublished itinerary means there was no oversight.

Yet quite limited has no public number attached. The reviewed policy states no dollar ceiling, percentage, escalation threshold or publication trigger. An internal limit may exist. The public text does not establish one.

Quarterly is not public

The Travel Policy contains two financial reporting sentences that point in different directions. It says a Board-expense budget is to be included in the annual Internet Society budget and made available to the ISOC community. The $329,000 line performs that aggregate function.

It then says a report on the overall level of spending is to be shared with the Board quarterly. That is more current than an annual plan, but its recipient remains internal. The policy does not state whether the quarterly report separates Board meetings, non-Board activity, Chair travel, commitments, reimbursements, cancellations or recovered funds.

Frequency and audience are different dimensions. A quarterly report can strengthen internal financial control while leaving the community with only the annual budget. Neither fact cancels the other.

The same separation applies to annual financial documents. Internet Society publishes reports, statements and Form 990 filings. Its public 2024 Form 990 lists trustees with zero reportable and other compensation in Part VII. That filing predates the 2026 revisions and answers a tax-reporting question. It is not a live travel ledger, and zero compensation is not proof of zero reimbursed expenses.

Reimbursement is not Board pay

Internet Society's bylaws draw a clean line. Trustees receive no compensation for service as trustees apart from reimbursement of expenses. The 2026 call for nominations repeats that travel reimbursement is available to trustees who request it and that there is no other compensation for Board service.

The bylaws also allow reasonable compensation for services rendered to Internet Society in another capacity. That clause is a legal category, not evidence that any current trustee performed or was paid for such work.

Three ledgers must therefore stay separate:

Record What it can prove What it cannot prove by itself
Board budget Planned aggregate resources A payment, recipient or travel amount
Trustee-funding record Request, purpose, approval and reimbursement state Compensation or misconduct
Compensation/tax record Amounts reportable under its stated perimeter Every expense reimbursement or current policy event

Collapsing them creates suspicion without evidence. Keeping them separate without a reconciliation point makes public accountability harder than it needs to be.

A public funding receipt

The repair should not be a public dump of receipts. Travel evidence can reveal home location, health needs, visas, hotel patterns, personal schedules, bank details and security-sensitive routes. The Board Code also requires protection of confidential information. Privacy is part of good governance, not an excuse to ignore it.

A public receipt can stay at the decision layer. Give each decision a stable identifier and fiscal year. Record the policy lane—Board meeting, retreat, co-located event, official representative, CEO-requested, other or Chair. State the public-purpose category, decision date, approval roles and any recusal. Mark the state as requested, approved, committed, reimbursed, cancelled, denied, recovered or corrected.

Amounts can be shown consistently as exact figures, bands or privacy-safe aggregates. The choice matters less than reconciliation. Annual totals by lane should add to a defined portion of the Board budget, with unexplained categories identified rather than guessed. The nominal-value rule and any escalation threshold should be numeric if the organisation relies on them.

The private record keeps tickets, itemised receipts, names of hotels, passports, visas and bank data. The public record proves authority, purpose, state and arithmetic. A correction or repayment should supersede the earlier state without erasing it.

This receipt would not show that a trip was wise, a trustee was independent or a programme succeeded. It would answer a smaller, testable question: which rule authorised this class of Board funding, which administrative state it reached, and how does the annual total connect to the public $329,000 line?

What cannot be concluded

The sources reviewed do not establish that any trustee received non-Board funding in 2026. They do not show that a disclosure, approval, receipt or quarterly report was missed. They do not establish overspending, private benefit, a related-party transaction, conflict, impropriety or legal breach.

The $329,000 line cannot be divided into recipients from public evidence. The absence of a public numeric meaning for quite limited does not prove the absence of an internal cap. The 2024 tax return cannot be used as a proxy for 2026 activity. The move from direct-to-Board email to Chair-then-Board transmission does not establish weaker control.

Internet Society has an internal governance system worth preserving: defined lanes, dual approvals, Board awareness, receipt custody and quarterly reporting. The public addition should make that system more intelligible, not replace it with accusation.

Sources

  1. https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/governance-policies/trustee-payment-disclosure-policy/
  2. https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/governance-policies/travel-policy-trustees/
  3. https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/resolutions/written-consent/
  4. https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2026-Action-Plan-EN.pdf
  5. https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/governance-policies/by-laws/
  6. https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/elections/2026/call-for-nominations/
  7. https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2024-Filed-Form-990-Public-Disclosure-Copy-Internet-Society.pdf
  8. https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/organization-reports/
  9. https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/governance-policies/fiduciary-obligations-trustees/
  10. https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/governance-policies/board-officer-code-ethics/
  11. https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/conflictofinterest-trustees.pdf
  12. https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/resolutions/137-2/
  13. https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/evote-trustee-payment-disclosure-policy.pdf
  14. https://www.internetsociety.org/transparency/