Let's see the problem from another angle...
IETF survives because, company and individuals give man/time to the IETF
and because companies/individual becomes member of ISOC that pays the
secretariat of the IETF (RFC editor, IAB,...). I don't know the full
picture here but I think I'm close...
What these companies get in return? Well they want that their products
become standard and because they drive the standard then people will
prefer to buy products from the standard maker than from someone else...
(simplistic view). There may be some other reasons why companies sponsor
IETF...
But what is visible, nothing. If you sponsor the IETF work in money,
then you get listed as ISOC organisation member. What the IETF/ISOC
could offer on top is the rigth for a year to use an IETF logo/trademark
"Support IETF" or "Designed for Internet" or something else... This logo
shows the committment of the company to work with the IETF in promoting
open Internet standard. As well RFC xxxx should be a registered
trademark, so that each time someone write RFC 1234 compatible on their
product they will add in the small print RFC 1234 is a trademark of
ISOC/IETF. The ISOC/IETF get bigger visibility. It pushes company
selling Internet product to refer back to ISOC/IETF and therefore
understand that they should support ISOC/IETF...
This does not go into the easy buy-in of kyle, but I wanted to provide a
sideline view on how ISOC/IETF could be sponsored, but more on how the
ISOC/IETF could acknowledge widely their sponsors...
Cheers
franck(_at_)sopac(_dot_)org