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Charities “could move to .ngo” if .org prices rise

Kevin Murphy, July 8, 2019, 08:55:32 (UTC), Domain Registries

File this one under “wrong-headed argument of the day”.
The head of policy at the Charities Aid Foundation reportedly has said that the recent removal of price increase caps at .org could lead to charities moving to other TLDs, “like .ngo”, which would cause confusion among charitable givers.
Rhodri Davies told The Telegraph (registration required) newspaper:

One of the benefits at the moment is you have at least at least one very well known and globally recognised domain name, that indicates to people that what they’re looking at is likely to be a charity or a social purpose organisation. If in the future, the pricing changes, and suddenly organisations have all sorts of different domain names, it’s going to be much harder for the public to know what it is they’re looking at. And that will get confusing and will probably have a negative impact on on people’s trust

The Telegraph gave .ngo (for non-governmental organization) as an example of a TLD they could move to. It’s not clear whether that was the example Davies gave or something the reporter came up with.
While Davies’ argument is of course sound — if charities were forced en masse to leave .org due to oppressive pricing, it would almost certainly lead to new opportunities for fraud — the choice of .ngo as an alternative destination is a weird one.
.ngo, like .org, is run by Public Interest Registry. It also runs .ong, which means the same thing in other languages.
But as 2012-round new gTLDs, neither .ngo or .ong have ever been subject to any pricing controls whatsoever.
At $30 a year, PIR’s wholesale price for .ngo is already a little more than three times higher than what it charges for .org domains. I find it difficult to imagine that .org will be the more expensive option any time soon.
.org domains currently cost $9.93 per year, and PIR has said it has no current plans to increase prices.
PIR does not have a monopoly on charity-related TLDs. Donuts runs .charity itself, which is believed to wholesale for $20 a year. It’s quite a new TLD, on the market for about a year, and has around 1,500 domains under management compared to .org’s 10 million.
Of course, .charity doesn’t have price caps either.
In the gTLD world, the only major TLDs left with ICANN-imposed price restrictions are Verisign’s .com and .net.

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