.org Domain Name

Experience the Distinction of .ORG

Trusted across all backgrounds, ages and nationalities, .ORG is where people turn to find credible information, get involved, fund causes and support advocacy. As a premier domain, .ORG provides an unrivaled channel to share ideas, to enhance lives, to advance your mission.

Get the .ORG Advantage

When you buy a .ORG, your organization is linked to a well-established brand of trust and integrity. One of the original top-level domains (TLDs), .ORG became the registry of choice for organizations dedicated to serving the public interest, and today .ORG is considered one of the most trusted domains on the internet.

If your organization is a noncommercial entity, people expect to find you in the .ORG community – nonprofits, foundations, philanthropic and cultural institutions, religious, civic, arts, social and fraternal organizations, health and legal services, clubs and community volunteer groups.

Commercial businesses also benefit. Registering with .ORG lends credibility to the activities of a charitable arm, and it also protects your brand and trademark as represented in your other domain name TLD registrations.

Extraordinary .ORGs

Large and small, local and global, .ORGs influence our world every day, effecting positive change on our planet. The .ORG registry highlights extraordinary organizations every month, and is a proud sponsor of the 2008 Webby Awards, the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.

.org (organization) is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internet’s Domain Name System. In the typical style of most gTLDs, .org is sometimes pronounced in word form as ‘dot-org’ or ‘dot-oh-are-gee (O R G)’ when spoken, although not all users of the TLD agree on this usage.

.org was one of the original top-level domains (the other five being .com, .edu, .gov, .mil and .net) , established in January 1985, originally intended for use by organizations that did not meet the requirements for other gTLDs. The MITRE Corporationwas the first group to register a .org domain with mitre.orgin July 1985.

Anyone can register a .org domain; there are no requirements for registration. .org was recommended for and perceived by common public to be of non-commercial entities, but there are no such registry restrictions as those for .gov or .edu top level domains. There are many instances of .org being used by commercial sites, although some people question whether it is ethical to do so. .org was also commonly recommended for use by individuals, although .name and .info are now alternatives.

The .org TLD has been operated since January 1, 2003 by Public Interest Registry, who took over from VeriSign Global Registry Services, a division of VeriSign.

Although organizations anywhere in the world can register .org domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own country code TLD. Such second-level domains are usually of the form .org.xx or .or.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. For example, .jp and .uk organize registrations this way.

Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and some categories of internationalized domain names may also be registered.

Example use

The .org TLD is mostly associated with non-profit organizations. In addition to its wide use in the charitable field, it is often used by the open-source movement, as opposed to the .com domains used mostly by companies.

Political parties in the US, such as the following, have domain names ending in .org:

• United States Democratic Party: http://www.democrats.org
• United States Libertarian Party: http://www.lp.org
• United States Green Party: http://www.gp.org

The Republican Party uses http://www.gop.com, although they also own http://www.rnc.org, which redirects to their main site.

Some European political parties also use .org, such as the Union for French Democracy at http://www.udf.organd the Party of European Socialists at http://www.pes.org/.

Some diplomatic missions, such as the Togolese Embassyin Paris (http://ambassadetogo.org/) and most French consulates in Canada and the United States, have websites ending in .org.

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