The organisation is funded by subscriptions of its members - apart from the monies received from the European Commission.

Each member of the Association is an organisation which provides Internet access, e-mail or hosting services to businesses or the public in the Irish market or offers these services from Ireland to overseas markets. Each member nominates one representative to attend the regularly held members' meetings and to participate in the e-mail list. Each member also makes a commitment to adopt the ISPAI Code of Practice and Ethics and to support the work of the hotline. Each member usually has one vote and can have a representative stand for election as a Director. Currently the ISPAI can have up to seven Directors.

Membership Categories
Membership is divided into two primary categories:-

• Standard Membership
  Organisations which market and sell Internet access, e-mail or hosting services to the public or businesses in the Irish Market or from Ireland into overseas markets.
  
• Associate Membership
  Organisations which do not necessarily offer the range of services to justify standard membership or are newly established or small enterprises and, who wish to participate in the ISPAI and benefit from being part of industry self-regulation. In recognition of the many new market entrants, ISPAI has introduced a very affordable Small Enterprise Associate Membership. For more details and the qualifying criteria click here.

Funding Model
The funding model is developed through a budgetary process. The Association identifies the required expenditure for the following financial year. These total costs are then funded by the membership subscriptions and via the EU part-funding of the hotline initiative. Many of the founding members of the association operate large Internet organisations and this is reflected in the level of membership fees which are levied on these organisations.

However, there are other smaller organisations which would benefit from membership of the ISPAI and the funding model adopted reflects the appropriate level of membership fees which are levied on this wide variety of organisations.

Unfortunately, a precisely defined formula to identify the level of membership for each organisation is very difficult. Historically, each member has self-selected the appropriate level and the board of the association accepts or negotiates this selection as appropriate. The relevant level is determined based on a range of criteria which include:-

• Number of customers
• Internet Telecommunications Bandwidth (International/Local)
• Scale of server rack space and allocated IP blocks
• Revenue/Turnover
• Profits
• Number of employees
• Traffic Volumes
• Internet Call minutes

2011 membership fees remain unchanged from those in 2010.

Platinum Membership
This level is appropriate for large organisations which have a large customer base – either commercial or consumer and/or large traffic volumes, large scale hosting facilities, international bandwidth/colocation and significant revenues. Members at this level can appoint one Director to the Board of the Association.
2011 fee for this level is €15,000.

Gold Membership
This level is appropriate for medium sized organisations which might not have a large number of customers but would have considerable traffic volumes and/or large hosting facilities, or run larger Irish-based Internet operations serving overseas markets and generate significant revenues. Members at this level can appoint one Director to the Board of the Association.
2011 fee for this level is €7,000.

Silver Membership
This level is appropriate for organisations who have medium or smaller scaled Internet access and/or hosting services or run smaller Irish-based Internet operations serving overseas markets. Members at this level cannot appoint a Director to the Board of the Association but may stand for election as a Director at a General Meeting of the Company.
2011 fee for this level is €3,500.

Associate Membership
This level is appropriate to organisations who may not view themselves as full service Access and/or Hosting providers but have a vested interest in being part of self-regulation of the Internet due to the services offered. Alternatively they may have relatively small scale operations, possibly due to offering these to a restricted geographic region or being quite new to the market and/or still establishing a customer base and revenues that would not justify one of the standard membership levels. Members at this level, may be invited by the agreement of membership to join the Board.
The 2011 fee for this level is €1,700