NGO does not work so well. In French it becomes ONG.

While .org doesn’t translate into all languages, ticking off two major international languages is quite a strength for the suffix.

1. The UK public is confused enough about what constitutes a charity (Eton College is, Amnesty and Greenpeace aren’t etc). How many people can tell you what an NGO is, or even what it stands for?

2. Plenty of organisations in the UK that are NGOs would never think of referring to themselves that way. Those that do use the acronym tend to be overseas development agencies, which often need to differentiate themselves in the countries in which they operate as explicitly not an arm of government. To confuse things further, quite a few of these self-declaring NGOs describe themselves as INGOs – international NGOs.

3. If .ngo were accepted, does that devalue an .org? I’d argue it would, because charities/nonprofits would have to educate their supporters that a .ngo site is regulated whereas an .org isn’t.

4. If .ngo becomes a valuable and trusted suffix, and charities/nonprofits choose to move to it as their prime URL, would anyone care to estimate the cost of changing all the printed material that mentions the .org address on charities’ literature? To that add the URLs that appear as signs on shops, charity vehicles, buildings and so on.

I lament the missed opportunities of .org but .ngo seems like a lot of effort to shut the stable door long after the horse has bolted, with the added possibility that it will just confuse the public further.

Even with a new dedicated extension, nonprofits holding the best .org names will be viewed as the established charities, while a new extension is likely to be viewed as second rate. This is similar to the .com space. Big, established companies hold the most identifiable .com names. Lesser companies settle for lesser qualities .com names or go to .net or the seldom used .biz.

I would advocate only allowing e.g. Charity Commission regulated organisations to be included. However, this excludes a number of well known organisations (including London museums), not to mention thousands of tiny organisations that would like to get involved.

Globally, England and Wales has different regulation to Ireland, US, Russia, etc etc. My guess would be that it would be opened up to so many different organisations that the original aim – to provided a trusted, closed signal – would be negated.

Interesting debate – would be great if the solutions can be found.

I’d imagine that if the idea of the new approved non-profits-only gTLD was to reduce online fraud then your main secure transaction site would need to be at that gTLD, but that you could still have addresses at other extensions pointing to it. Anyone without approval could not use the non-profit gTLD at all so could not redirect to it.