Dear Lisa and all,

According to Meta and the just-released WMF Advancement fourth-quarter tuning session deck, the Endowment actually passed the $100-million mark not this month, but three months ago – in June, before the start of this current financial year. The Meta page e.g. says:

The Endowment reached our initial $100 million goal in June 2021. The goal was set as part of a ten-year plan from 2016-2026.


This means the Endowment grew by around $40 million in the 2020/2021 financial year alone – about as much as in the three previous years together – based on this Meta edit by Endowment Director Amy Parker, who stated that on June 30, 2020, the Endowment stood at $62.9 million:


I say "around $40 million" because if the Endowment grew from $62.9 million on June 30, 2020, to over $100 million sometime during June, 2021, at least $37.1 million (and probably a little more) must have been added to it in the 2020/2021 financial year. 

Now, according to the just-released WMF Advancement fourth-quarter tuning session deck, in the 2020/2021 financial year the Foundation raised ...

– $154 million for the Foundation (vs. an initial target of $108 million) 
– $18.9 million (vs. a target of $5 million) for the Endowment


I've been told by WMF staff that the WMF receives two kinds of moneys for the Endowment: 

– Some are "pass-through" donations to the Endowment. These are moneys received by the Foundation that are passed straight on. They enter the Endowment directly and do not appear in the Foundation's Revenue, Assets or Expenses figures.
– Some are ordinary WMF revenue, reflected in WMF Support and Revenue totals, which is then used to make a Foundation grant to the Endowment. Such WMF grants to the Wikimedia Endowment are included in the Foundation's expenses total, under Awards and Grants. My understanding was that this has been $5 million per annum (equalling the target mentioned in the above slide), for the past six years.

So what are the $18.9 million for the Endowment in the tuning session deck? Does that mean that the WMF, in the last financial year, took $172.9 million in revenue ($154M + $18.9M) and made an $18.9 million grant to the Endowment? 

Or are these $18.9 million pass-through gifts to the Endowment, which won't show up in the Foundation's financial statements at all, and the annual $5 million came on top of that, out of the $154 million?

At any rate, given that the Endowment evidently grew by at least $37.1 million in the last financial year, the $18.9 million mentioned in the tuning session deck are about $20 million short. Where did the other money come from, given that it seems to have been so much more than in previous years? 

Were there any particularly large gifts from companies or foundations? The only major gift mentioned on the Meta page is a $1 million gift from Amazon.

I am sorry for the many questions, and apologise in advance for any errors or misunderstandings on my part, but I find the Endowment set-up completely impenetrable and non-transparent. 

There is no Form 990 documentation, because the Foundation says on the Form 990 it does not have any Endowment assets, and there are no timely updates or audited financial statements about money going into the Endowment or coming out of it. I wish this were different.

I will copy these questions to the Endowment talk page as well.

Regards,
Andreas

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 3:58 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Dear all,


Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2]. 


My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board, Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am 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 [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world. 


As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as well as in nonprofit management.


You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement, and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment talk page [6].


Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible. 


Best regards, 

Lisa 


[1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/ 

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay 

[4]https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/ 

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment 

[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment

--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation


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