Phoebe, 

You say, 

"Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations)."

Changing fundraising strategies for the Endowment has no impact whatsoever on affiliate grants. This past year, for example, during the height of the pandemic, people like Jason Adams, the WMF's Senior Planned Giving Specialist, emailed past Wikipedia donors, impressing on them how prudent it would be to make a will leaving money to the Wikimedia Endowment in the event of their death. "It's a great way to protect your loved ones and the causes you care about most all at once," he wrote. "When you leave a gift to the Wikimedia Endowment, you become part of Wikipedia's legacy."[1]

This fulfils at least some people's definition of aggressive, if not "creepy" fundraising.[2][3]

You can't blame Jason – it's what he was hired to do – but clearly the WMF feels it has a captive and lucrative product, Wikipedia, and should monetise the hell out of it in the most professional manner possible while the going is good – to the point where its spending struggles to keep pace with its rising revenue (which is the precise situation that led to the Knowledge Equity Fund[4]). 

Again, that approach is surely common enough in the US and elsewhere – make money first, think about how to spend it later –, but the problem is that Wikipedia isn't just a product, but a community of volunteers. 

Monetising the hell out of a volunteer community feels different from monetising a product.

As for "Changing fundraising strategies really means changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate grants", I suppose that was meant to make people afraid they might lose funding. But the fact is that the size and scope of the WMF annual plan "changes" constantly: it balloons more and more each year. 

While budgeted expenses for 2020/2021 were $108M[5] (and the WMF generally underspends), this year's 2021/2022 annual plan[6] budgets for a total expenditure of $150M – a year-on-year increase of nearly 40 per cent. Someone clearly thought, let's throw all caution to the wind. 

I am reminded of the way Mozilla ballooned ... 

Meanwhile, fundraising banners continue to tell the public money is urgently needed to "protect Wikipedia's independence", make people believe the WMF "often struggles to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running"[7], and Wikimedia's upbeat, invariably "excited" PR resembles more and more the output of an Orwellian propaganda ministry. 

No doubt the architects of this development will eventually leave the WMF with résumés highlighting by how much they increased revenue over such-and-such an amount of time, how they built a $100M endowment in half the time planned (this target was achieved five years early), and move to a different employer who values these abilities. 

As for how the WMF and Wikipedia will be viewed by donors, the public and the volunteer community, time will tell what their legacy will be.

Andreas


On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 12:17 AM phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations). 

cheers, 
Phoebe 


On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:21 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Thank you, Christophe and SJ.  You both were great supporters of this effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the ground without you.  It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something long-term like an endowment.  Thanks for giving that to us!

Best,
Lisa

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it! That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own organization.

And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)

Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.

Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!

All good news, thank you again Lisa!


--
Christophe


On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, 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

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