A truly amazing achievement!

It must have been 10 or 11 years since I was in the group supporting the financial person at the board.  And we then discussed how much the potential income could be from donations and we also raise the issue of an endowment.  Income from donations has since been quadrupled, but even more impressive is the development of the endowment fund. Then just a dream, now a reality!

Life has its ups and downs and this also goes for organisations and projects. It is therefor so assuring there are money if and when we are going into hard times, so that our enormous knowledge repositories in our projects will not only survive but also be able to go forward independent of the big tech-dragons (or government agencies).

Anders

Den 2021-03-01 kl. 18:34, skrev Lisa Gruwell:

Hi all - 

I have some good news to share. Five years ago, we launched the Wikimedia Endowment as a permanent safekeeping fund to enable us to fulfill the part of our mission that says we will provide support to the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. Our goal was to raise an initial USD $100 million for the Endowment by 2026, after which income earned from investing the fund would become a new stream of financial support for Wikimedia projects. 

Thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters and the hard work of the staff and the Endowment Board, the Endowment now holds $90 million. We anticipate that we will surpass the $100 million goal next fiscal year.

At the outset, the Endowment was established as a Collective Action Fund at Tides Foundation, with the plan to move it to a permanent structure as the fund neared critical mass. In preparation for the approaching $100 million milestone, we are now beginning the work of taking the Endowment to its next stage of maturity: establishing it as an independent public charity with the mission of providing financial support for the Wikimedia projects. 

We are grateful to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations on meta to help us think through initial decisions regarding its launch, to the WMF Board that gave the Endowment its full support, and especially to the Endowment Board who, among many other things, introduced us to their friends and opened their homes to host fundraising events for us. 

While we look forward to celebrating the achievement of the $100 million milestone in the next year, the work of growing the Endowment will not be over. Our direct fundraising efforts will continue, as will our pursuit of planned gifts (such as gifts in wills and other legacy gifts). To date, we have over 1,000 members of the Wikimedia Legacy Society – donors who have agreed to leave a portion of their estate to the Wikimedia Endowment. Their long-term commitment is a sign of deep respect for the work of our volunteer communities and of a desire to help us reach the ambitious 2030 Strategic Direction.

As we move forward in these efforts, you can follow updates on meta, and we welcome your questions on the Endowment’s Talk page. We started this endowment conversation with the community on that page five years ago and that is the best place to continue it as we move into this next phase. Thank you to everyone who has helped bring us to this point in the road.  

Best regards,

Lisa Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

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Lisa Seitz Gruwell Chief Advancement Officer Wikimedia Foundation

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