The Swedish Internet Foundation is a foundation. A foundation is a type of legal entity that, in contrast to company and associations, does not have an owner and has no members. The Foundation is essentially a self-owning financial unit and is governed by its charter of foundation.
The Foundation is managed by a Board of Directors. The purpose of the Foundation and regulations concerning how it must operate can be found in the charter of foundation, including the associated statutes.
Charter of foundation, August 26, 1997
"The internet arrived in Sweden in the early 1980s through its use in the academic circles. In the early 1990s, the first commercial networks and their operators arrived. Today, the internet is an essential tool and means for various operations in Sweden. Since the internet’s arrival, the number of users has doubled every year.
The Foundation’s purpose is to promote positive stability in the internet infrastructure in Sweden and to promote research, training and education in data and telecommunication, with a specific focus on the internet. By so doing, the Foundation must assign priority areas that increase the efficiency of the infrastructure for electronic data communication, whereby the Foundation, inter alia, shall disseminate information concerning R&D efforts, initiate and implement R&D projects and implement high-quality inquiries. The Foundation must particularly promote the development of the handling of domain names under the top-level domain “.se” and other national domains pertaining to Sweden.
Promoting positive stability in the internet infrastructure could, for example, entail handling the administration and registration of domain names, supporting the establishment, operation and build-out of internet centers in Sweden and supporting the operation of joint resources, such as directory systems and the distribution of exact time.
The undersigned hereby forms a foundation, The Internet Foundation In Sweden, with the aforementioned as its stated purpose and grants the Foundation in order to constitute its foundation capital: two hundred thousand Swedish kronor (SEK 200,000)."
Non-profit association The Swedish Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-SE)
charter of foundation, at the 20th anniversary 2017.
Regulations
"The Foundation’s purpose is to promote positive stability in the internet infrastructure in Sweden and to promote research, training and education in data and telecommunication, with a specific focus on the internet. By so doing, the Foundation must assign priority areas that increase the efficiency of the infrastructure for electronic data communication, whereby the Foundation, inter alia, shall disseminate information concerning R&D efforts, initiate and implement R&D projects and implement high-quality inquiries.
The Foundation must particularly promote the development of the handling of domain names under the top-level domain “.se” and other national domains pertaining to Sweden." The statutes were adopted in 1997.
Read the statutes in full here.
Rules of procedure for the Nomination Committee for The Swedish Internet Foundation
The rules governing the election of Board members of The Swedish Internet Foundation are stated in the statutes. The statutes (paragraph 5) state that certain specified organizations shall elect seven Board members, with a mandate period of two years. An eighth member shall be elected by the other members of the Board. The statutes do not pose any restrictions on who the organization may elect as member. It is not mandatory for the member to be connected to the appointing organization. Nor do the statutes specify the competency profile of a perspective Board member.
The purpose of the rules of procedure is also to regulate the coordination that must occur in conjunction with a possible permutation or other alteration of the The Swedish Internet Foundation statutes. Read the rules of procedure for the Nomination Committee (pdf).
