How to Close America's Digital Equity Gaps: Toward a Digital Futures Foundation

Is our practice of dumping the proceeds from the privatization of the public airwaves into the federal treasury, as is now routinely done, the best use of this precious public resource? No. The nation should dedicate a sizable share of spectrum auction proceeds to closing these digital equity gaps and should establish a reliable, proven vehicle to pursue this task. An endowed, independent, and private charitable foundation would best have the flexibility, research focus, long-term time perspective, and ability to engage other partners that such a mission will require. This experience emerges from the success around the world of a strategy known as “philanthropication thru privatization,” or PtP for short. This paper xplores the possibility of applying this PtP concept to create an independent Digital Futures Foundation endowed with a substantial portion of the windfall proceeds from future, and possibly even recently concluded, spectrum auctions.