On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When you consider the source of much of the donations, you will find that they have been coming mainly from the United States. Chapters are becoming more and more active in fundraising. The Dutch chapter for instance plans on professionalising its operations and fundraising staff has the highest priority. It performed much better, one of the reasons is that IDEAL, a payment method for the Internet in the Netherlands, was implemented. I am sure that with increased support from the WMF not only but also the Dutch will raise substantially more money this time around.
When you ask for an endowment, you indicate an opinion that the current levels of support for our projects suffice. I do not share that opinion and, I am happy to find indications in the planning that this opinion is supported in the plans for 2010/11. Milos and myself will talk in Gdansk about the need to improve technical support for our smallest projects (think Hindi, Malayalam... hundreds of million people will benefit..). Some of it is hard core language support and some are changes to operating projects in order to raise traffic and usability for readers.
Hi Gerard, A small point -- I don't know who the "you" refers to here -- me? -- but when *I* ask for an endowment, it is not because I think the current levels of support suffice; that's a different question. It's because I don't want the long-term support for Wikimedia to be dependent on our ability to fundraise increasingly large amounts from year to year. Fundraising above and beyond such an endowment is fine and good and necessary as well. I have heard that raising an endowment was rejected by the strategy process because it was hard; I don't know what that means, exactly, but raising an extra $20M in a recession is hard, too.
Someone was talking to me the other day about the differences between Wikimedia and large universities, such as the one where I work. "You don't mind criticizing the university governance", he said; "in part because you can't imagine it ever going away, no matter what."
It's true, and I want Wikimedia to be that stable. In fact, I want it to be *more* stable than most American universities are at the moment -- certainly more than mine!
-- phoebe