Hi Samuel,
On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Samuel J Klein <sj(a)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