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ICANN Publishes Its Annual Report and Reports $100 Million in Assets

ICANN just published its annual report for 2011 and god bless, in the worst economy of our lifetimes they managed to get up to just short of $100 Million in assets; cash, investments and accounts receivable for the year ending June 30, 2011.

According to the report as of June 30, 2011, ICANN has over $29 Million in Cash, $51 Million in investments and over $15 Million in accounts receivable, and with some other assets all totalled, just short of $100 Million dollars.

Of course like the rest of us and to be fair, ICANN has some bills and obligations, but it’s showing as “Unrestricted Net Assets” over $80 Million while it wound up last year, June 2010 with only $64 Million.

Not horrible for a non-profit that seems to be quite profitable.

On the income side ICANN seems to have brought in $70 Million in revenue plus made some $6 Million on its investments in the year ending June 2011.

On the expense side ICANN incurred “Personnel Expenses of over $26 Million, over $12 million in Travel, over $12 million in Professional expenses and finally an administrative cost of over $8 Million.

Other than the raw numbers here is what ICANN says are the achievements for the year:

“Fiscal year 2011 may be remembered most for what happened at the end, when ICANN’s Board of Directors approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of Internet domain name extensions, generic top-level domains, such as .com, .org and .net.”

“Major changes do not happen easily or quietly, nor should they when the global public interest is at stake.”

“The Board’s decision to usher in this historic change to the Internet domain name system was the culmination of six years of debate and deliberation within ICANN’s multistakeholder community, and brought many to the table that had never before engaged with ICANN.” “The Board of Directors approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of generic Internet domain name extensions (called generic top- level domains) beyond the current 21, which include such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net.”

“Between 20 June and the writing of this report, 4,943 news stories about new gTLDs had been posted, printed or broadcast around the world.”

I think that works out to something like $2,000 a story when compared to assets.

Which we at our TheDomains.com could claim the same.

2012 brings the new gTLD’s which at $185,000 per application fee is said by ICANN to be revenue neutral or a cost recovery.

Of course the budget ICANN put together for the new gTLD revenue doesn’t have even $1 allocated as coming from auctions of strings in contention, otherwise known to domainers as auctions.

All that auction proceeds money will flow apparently flow directly to the bottom line.

So 2012 report should be much better.

Actually ICANN could under the right circumstances be a non-profit with over $250 Million in “Unrestricted Net Assets” within 2 years.

Lets call it our 1st prediction for 2013.

June 2013.

Mark it.

By Michael Berkens, President of Worldwide Media, Inc.

Michael H. Berkens is a member of the Florida Bar, President of Worldwide Media, Inc. which owns over 75,000 domain name, a Director in RightoftheDot.com and writes a blog at TheDomains.com.

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