Forwarding to the Treasurers and Affiliate mailing lists for their
consideration.
Pine
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Pine W" <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>
Date: Nov 30, 2015 10:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Endowment Discussion
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc:
That's a good question.
Alternatives to private sector equity investments include public-sector
bonds, as well as commodities and currencies. While I wouldn't recommend
that WMF do either of the latter two, there might be some reasonable
choices for WMF in the public sector bond market.
In the private sector, I hope that WMF would be very careful about the
ethics of the companies and industries in which it chooses to invest.
Pine
On Nov 30, 2015 10:01 AM, "Brion Vibber" <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Thanks!
>
> I added a section to the talk page asking about how we would actually go
> about investing... the purpose of an endowment is to let it grow and just
> spend some of the interest, but that growth doesn't happen in a vacuum.
> Investment happens by putting money into other peoples' businesses and
> letting them pay you back with interest.
>
> So we'd be asking donors for tens of millions of dollars to invest in
> third-party businesses -- a fundamental change in our fundraising
> proposition. Thinking about our social responsibility as an investor is
> probably worthwhile.
>
> -- brion
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all-
> >
> > For several years, the Wikimedia movement has been having discussions
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment> about whether and when to
> > begin
> > building an endowment. I put an essay up on meta recently in an attempt
> to
> > rekindle this conversation with the community. We included launching an
> > endowment in the FY 2015-16 annual plan. We also plan to have this
> > conversation as a part of the larger strategic planning process because
> > building an endowment means prioritizing some future needs over some
> > current needs.
> >
> > Before we can begin to support an endowment, there is strategic
> groundwork
> > that should be completed to ensure that the effort is both thoughtful and
> > successful. To help get the conversation moving, I seeded the discussion
> > page with a few questions that we are hoping you will help us answer.
> > Please add the questions I didn't think to ask, too. We'd appreciate
> > hearing your thoughts on this and your help in thinking through some of
> the
> > strategic questions.
> >
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Lisa Gruwell
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