[Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million

[Sue Gardner]

Hi all,

I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of
USD 2 million.  It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides
Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and
it is completely unrestricted.

We'll be putting out a press release tomorrow, but I wanted to tell
you beforehand.  This is really great news.  It's important to us
financially, of course, but I see it as equally important from a
symbolic perspective.  I believe that Wikimedia and Google are natural
allies and partners --- we both want to help provide people everywhere
around the world with information.  It seems natural to me that Google
would want to support Wikimedia's work, and I am happy they are doing
it.

You probably know that Google and Wikimedia -–both editors and
Wikimedia Foundation staff-- have, from time to time, collaborated on
projects together.  (For example, the Google team has created
functionality inside the Google Translate Toolkit that enables editing
and uploading of translated articles to Wikipedia.)  This grant will
not be channeled specifically towards Google-related activities: it
will go into our general operating revenues. Having said that, I look
forward to Google and Wikimedia continuing to do good work together.

The press release is below.  It will go out tomorrow morning , but you
don't need to keep this news confidential.  Feel free to tell your
friends :-)

Thanks,
Sue Gardner




Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google
Donation will support capacity investments in Wikipedia and other free
knowledge projects

EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:00AM PST, February 17 2009

SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2009 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the
non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has
received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable
Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. This is the Wikimedia Foundation's
first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs
of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical
infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and
capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the
organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more
accessible.

"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered
Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of
community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is
online."

Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member, Jimmy Wales,
also commented on the Google gift. "We are very pleased and grateful.
This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the
long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia. Both
organizations are committed to bringing high quality information to
hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the
Internet better for everyone."

The two organizations have a long-standing working relationship. Most
recently, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have partnered to
support translation of Wikipedia content into key languages with
relatively small Wikipedia editions. Google's Translation Toolkit
supports direct online translation of Wikipedia articles, and has been
used by Google in Wikipedia translation pilot projects with speakers
of Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, offered:
"It is wonderful that Google has stepped forward as a major supporter
of a global, non-profit information commons. With this generous grant,
we will be able to fund additional operations and development work to
increase access and contributions to our free knowledge projects
globally."

Wikimedia's support comes primarily from individual donations made by
regular users of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation completed its
2009-10 fundraiser in January. During the drive, 240,000 individuals
donated more than $8 million, representing three quarters of its
planned revenue for the fiscal year.

-- 
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate