I have one or two ideas about what to do with 3 billion US Dollar. It would be a huge step towards some of my stretch goals for the movement.

On Fri Jan 02 2015 at 12:08:43 PM James Salsman <jsalsman@gmail.com> wrote:
Oliver Keyes wrote:
>
>... Extrapolation is not a particularly useful method to use for
> the budget, because it assumes endless exponential growth.

I agree. Formal budgeting usually shouldn't extend further than three
to five years in the nonprofit sector (long-term budgeting is
unavoidable in government and some industry.)  However, here are a
couple illustrations of some reasons I believe a ten year
extrapolation of Foundation fundraising is completely reasonable:
http://imgur.com/a/mV72T

>... I can't see what we'd actually /do/ with 3 billion dollars

I used to be in favor of a establishing an endowment with a sufficient
perpetuity, and then halting fundraising forever, but I have changed
my mind. I think the Foundation should continue to raise money
indefinitely to pay people for this task:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service

That is equivalent to a general computer-aided instruction system,
with the side effects of both improving the encyclopedia and making
counter-vandalism bots more accurate. As an anonymous crowdsourced
review system based on consensus voting instead of editorial
judgement, it leaves the Foundation immunized with their safe harbor
provisions regarding content control intact.

Best regards,
James Salsman

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