On Nov 21, 2007 5:58 PM, SJ Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Lars,
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007, Lars Aronsson wrote:
there, as a reserve for future meager years? If the interest rate is 4% then a fund which is 25 times bigger than the budget can support it in whole for ever. But even a smaller fund might be a good help. Should donors be given the option of giving to the current budget or giving to the fund? Has this been discussed?
This does come up from time to time. It is tremendously important. Being able to choose to give to a limited fund or trust for core sustenance would be a great thing.
I would fundraise aggressively for a trust to support core Wikipedia sustenance for the next century.
I completely agree with this.
While I don't doubt that if the announcement was made that "Wikipedia was going off the air tomorrow", a few wealthy donors would probably step up, it's awfully hard to be fully independent under those circumstances. And being able to guarantee baseline minimum operation would free up fundraising for other areas, as well; many grants, for instance, don't fund day-to-day operating expenses. It would also lessen the potential for having to make hard choices when the fundraisers didn't do well.
A long-term Wikimedia Endowment, specially for keeping the sites up and backed up and nothing else, could conceivably be of interest to many donors that wouldn't normally consider giving, as well; academic institutions, perhaps, or groups concerned with the preservation of information. Such a project deserves a separate, thoughtful, dedicated fundraising effort until it happens.
-- phoebe