New subject: Endowment Discussion

2 Dec 2015


      A big advantage of having an endowment would be in conversations with our
GLAM partners.
- An organisation funded by an endowment can more credibly make longer-term
commitments than one that is not. This would be particularly attractive to
some of our current and potential GLAM partners; "Entrust us with a copy of
your images and metadata and we have the funding to keep it on the Internet
for the foreseeable future" would be a very attractive commitment for us to
be able to make. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment#Advantages
We don't need an endowment large enough to keep the organisation going as
is, or even the pedias being still open to edit, before we can commit that
"the media library on Wikimedia Commons has an endowment that should
suffice to keep it on the web or on whatever replaces the internet for the
foreseeable future" . In a world of budget cuts and short term thinking
this would be a very positive thing for us to be able to say to museum
curators and similar custodians of cultural heritage. That doesn't mean we
commit to keeping everything in a particular image release, we might well
delete some images because our policy on copyright risk will be different
to theirs. But if you want to keep things in existence longterm then the
strategy used by the writers of the domesday book still works. Make several
copies and place them with organisations that intend to be around
for millennia to come. An endowment could mean that we become such an
organisation. I would hope that the WMF board aims for an endowment that
allows us to make such a commitment.
An endowment so large that we no longer need an annual fundraiser would be
a very much larger sum and harder in my view to justify. Why should this
generation pay so that people can edit Wikipedia in 2050 without there
being a fundraising banner?
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2015 02:39:59 +0330
From: Mardetanha mardetanha.wiki@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Endowment Discussion
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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@gmail.com
wrote:
...
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@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@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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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2015 18:25:20 -0500
From: Risker risker.wp@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Endowment Discussion
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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