Responding to the news that ICANN rejected the transfer of control of the .org registry , Rick Cohen, Chief Operating Officer/Chief Communications Officer for the National Council of Nonprofits, released the following statement:
“We are glad that the ICANN board came to the only logical decision in this situation: a rejection of the transfer of the .org registry. And, in their statement doing so, they validated the concerns that the .org community has had from the beginning. A conversion from a nonprofit that, by law, is required to serve the community interest to a for-profit entity primarily concerned with paying down hundreds of millions in debt and then needing to generate returns for their shareholders before even thinking about the community would have fundamentally changed how the .org registry operated. Multiple factors cited by the ICANN board in their decision were rooted in the benefits of Public Interest Registry’s nonprofit status. We’re glad that the online home for millions of nonprofits worldwide will continue to be run by a nonprofit.”