On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@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.
Fantastic, this is exciting news. I am very happy to see this moving forward, and will comment on the talk page of the endowment essay.
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thinking about our social responsibility as an investor is probably worthwhile.
I agree, and this is a good point to bring up.
The endowment, if it's of a scale that will be effective, will have an investment manager and perhaps even an investment committee. I think directing that group to look at investment vehicles (i.e. mutual funds) with certain value guidelines in mind would be appropriate, much as we would direct them to have certain financial goals and levels of risk in mind. Figuring out what those values should be might not be so easy, but we could look at the investment policies of other large socially-minded organizations for ideas.
best, Phoebe