Is not only about "fulfilling wishes". Is about solving the enormous lag of tech problems we have. We may be the only top-10 site in the world with links to features in all the pages that are not working (as the book creator). We may have 100 million USD to mantain our legacy forever. It will be a nice museum of how Internet looked in the 1990s. We may have lots of money, but we lack any strategy to invest this money in making our platform better.

thanks

Galder
From: phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2021 1:16 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members
 
Thanks Christophe, SJ and all! Lisa, agreed - it's taken a lot of work over the years from many people to get here. A big thanks to all of the endowment staff past and present and especially to you Lisa, who has been there as an advocate from the very beginning "what if we made an endowment?!" days. Also thanks to my fellow current and former trustees on the WMF & Endowment boards who have supported this effort. I'm honored and excited to be a part of the next chapter of the endowment, and I hope to hear community members' thoughts on the best way an endowment could support the very long term future of the Wikimedia projects and free knowledge too. 

Galder -- though the endowment may only ever indirectly support this, yes to a wishlist system that fulfills more wishes. I want to see this too. 
Cunctator -- this seems like a different topic for a different thread? 
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

--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation


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Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation


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