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ICANN Seeks Evaluators for the Support Applicant Review Panel (SARP) - Request for Expressions of Interest (EOI)

3 February 2012

ICANN is seeking individuals to serve on the Support Applicant Review Panel (SARP), an important component of the New gTLD Applicant Support Program that seeks to serve the global public interest by ensuring worldwide accessibility to, and competition within, the New gTLD Program. Panelists will be responsible for evaluating and scoring applications for financial assistance.

As new gTLDs are ushering in the biggest change to the Internet in years, SARP volunteers will be on the front line of the effort to lessen the digital divide by expanding the Internet to less-developed parts of the world. They will be part of an exclusive group of individuals chosen for their background and experience in areas such as running a small business, operating in developing economies, analyzing business plans, serving in the public interest, managing a domain name registry service, or awarding grants. SARP volunteers will make a real and lasting contribution to ensuring that the opportunities for innovation and economic development created by the Internet are open to all.

The financial assistance component of the Applicant Support Program offers a limited number of qualifying applicants the opportunity to pay a reduced evaluation fee of USD 47,000 instead of the full evaluation fee of USD 185,000.

SARP members will evaluate support applications against the established public interest, financial capabilities and financial need criteria outlined in the Financial Assistance Handbook [PDF, 710 KB] and as a group they will score each applicant.  It is important to note that panelists will not weigh the relative merits of overall gTLD applications.

If you are interested in applying to be a SARP member, please review the criteria, time commitment and other expectations as detailed in the posted EOI [PDF, 172 KB].

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