Hi Samuel,
On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Samuel J Klein sj@wikimedia.org wrote:
One can always keep increasing operational spending. Reserves or long-term funds should grow in tandem with those increases -- otherwise as we come to rely on this new spending, there is additional risk that efforts may collapse if funding dries up. Example: the coming year's Annual Plan includes a 50% drop in our effective reserve -- the reserve is staying the same while the annual budget doubles.
My point was that working on an endowment at the current situation isn't a very sensible thing to do. An endowment isn't a reserve, though, so I'm not sure where the two are related here. The former is a means to generate revenue, the later a means to handle revenue shortfalls.
It makes sense of course to have your reserves grow with your spending. Neither I nor anyone else was advocating something different.
Regardless of what we do with reserves and long-term funds, keeping the projects online forever was the premise of the last fundraiser. We have an immediate obligation to make progress towards that goal. A new datacenter will help, but I'd like to see specific long-term forecasts and plans published.
Isn't the strategy project providing just that?
Best regards,
Sebastian Moleski President Wikimedia Deutschland