Hi Felipe,
Funding open knowledge projects beyond Wikimedia, or other altruistic projects that have nothing to do with Wikimedia at all (the Knowledge Equity Fund is a case in point, of course ...) doesn't seem right to me.
The WMF has been fundraising in India (as well as in Latin America and South Africa) this month, telling people there:
– that "a lot" of the money Wikimedia raises is flowing into the Global South[1] (according to the WMF tax return, it's about 2.5% of the money raised)
– to donate because it will "keep Wikipedia online, ad-free and growing for years to come" (India emails)
– "We request you to sustain Wikipedia's independence. 98% of our readers don't donate ..." (India fundraising banners)
Leaving aside what "keeping Wikipedia online" and "sustaining Wikipedia's independence" actually mean in this context, given that Wikimedia is richer than it has ever been and last year alone brought in about $90 million more than it spent – leaving that aside, you cannot beg a people earning a fraction of what you make on average for money as if Wikipedia's survival depended on it and then go and give their money away to some completely different cause.
Just for reference, according to the India FoodBanking Network[1],
– India is home to the largest undernourished population in the world
– 189.2 million people i.e. 14% of India's population is undernourished
– 20% of children under 5 are underweight
– 34.7% of children under 5 years of age are stunted
– 51.4% women in the reproductive age (15-49 years) are anaemic
Reading such statistics one wonders whether Wikipedia's Indian fundraising banners wouldn't be more appropriately used if they advertised some charities that will improve the quality of life of some of the most vulnerable people in India, instead of asking people there to send money to the US.
Should the WMF still find itself saddled with an embarrassment of riches: I recall that the other day we were encouraged here on this list to endorse a Discourse forum for Wikimedia strategy discussions – because it has good machine translation capabilities that MediaWiki lacks. If there is such a big surplus, wouldn't it be better to use it to incorporate similar translation capabilities in MediaWiki? MediaWiki is woefully obsolete in this respect, and in Wikimedia's case international communication across language barriers is arguably more important than it is in the case of sites like Facebook, which incorporated automatic translation a fair while ago.
This still wouldn't be about "keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free" or "sustaining Wikipedia's independence", but at least it would help the volunteers who actually write Wikipedia.
Best,
Andreas