This is very very very very veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy good news!! Thanks
Erik, and the rest of the team!!
Waerth
Hi folks,
I’m delighted to tell you that yesterday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation board of
directors voted to award the Wikimedia Foundation USD 1 million annually for the coming
three years. A total of USD 3 million, spread over three years.
This is what Sloan characterizes as "institutional funding" - meaning, a form
of grant designed to help us work towards our general goals – in our case, financial and
operational sustainability, increasing quality, increasing and broadening participation,
and distributing our material beyond the wiki environment. As you know, we’ve recently
expanded the staff from 10 to 15, and we still have a few more positions to fill: this
funding will offset those increased costs.
This is _fabulous_ news. Sloan is high-profile and widely-respected: this donation is
financially significant for us, and it also signals that Sloan sees our work as important
and our organization as trustworthy.
I’d like to take a moment to thank Erik Moeller, who developed our first contact with
Sloan through his work representing Wikimedia on the Encyclopedia of Life's
institutional council. (Sloan is an EOL funder.) Based on that initial relationship, in
January Sloan invited Erik to present to them about Wikimedia, after which they asked us
for a formal request for funding. Without Erik, this would not have happened. Yay, Erik
:-)
We will be sending out a press release in a few hours, and I will also send this note to
foundation-l soon. Meanwhile, please join the staff and board of the Wikimedia Foundation
in celebrating this terrific news!
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director,
Wikimedia Foundation
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