That is so awesome. Nice work Erik!
On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
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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