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,LisaOn 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
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment--
Lisa Seitz Gruwell
Chief Advancement Officer
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Lisa Seitz Gruwell
Chief Advancement Officer
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