As good as having an endowment might be, I would like to see substantial
improvements to WMF's budget transparency and annual plan process before
the fundraising for an endowment starts.
Pine
On Dec 1, 2015 15:25, "Risker" <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Heh. $100 million USD is just a little more than is
raised (and spent) on
an annual basis throughout all the Wiki-chapters and WMF, including grants
that are separate from direct fundraising. It *might* last 5-7 years of
bare-bones "keeping the lights on only" functions, but that would mean no
software upgrades (except what volunteers do in accord with their own
desire as opposed to actual need), no community support, no funds to
chapters, no Wikimania or hackathons or other conferences, no support for
free-as-in-libre work, and very little assurance that if there were major
changes in the most commonly used platforms, the WMF would be able to keep
up-to-date with this.
This is going to take a fair amount of thinking through, and needs to
include our thinking about what we would consider the minimal operating
functions of the project, and how long it would need to be able to
proceed.
Risker/Anne
On 1 December 2015 at 18:09, Mardetanha <mardetanha.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
do we have any definite number that if reach then
we would not any
fundraiser again in the future (I really would like to to see WMF in the
position in which, it would not need yearly fundraiser to stand up and
keep
running ) , like 100 M mentioned in the meta page
?
Mardetanha
On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 4:22 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Lisa Gruwell
<lgruwell(a)wikimedia.org
> wrote:
> > Hi all-
> >
> > For several years, the Wikimedia movement has been having discussions
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment> about whether and when
to
> begin
> > building an endowment. I put an essay up on meta recently in an
attempt
to
> rekindle this conversation with the community. We included launching
an
endowment
in the FY 2015-16 annual plan.
Fantastic, this is exciting news. I am very happy to see this moving
forward, and will comment on the talk page of the endowment essay.
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Thinking about our social responsibility as an
investor is
probably worthwhile.
I agree, and this is a good point to bring up.
The endowment, if it's of a scale that will be effective, will have an
investment manager and perhaps even an investment committee. I think
directing that group to look at investment vehicles (i.e. mutual
funds) with certain value guidelines in mind would be appropriate,
much as we would direct them to have certain financial goals and
levels of risk in mind. Figuring out what those values should be might
not be so easy, but we could look at the investment policies of other
large socially-minded organizations for ideas.
best,
Phoebe
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