Hi,
The 2010-11 Annual Plan and Questions and Answers have just been posted to the Foundation website (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010-2011_fiscal_year). The plan was approved by the Board last week.
The 2010-11 plan differs from previous years in that this plan is rooted in the five-year (2010-2015) Wikimedia Strategy which has been developed collaboratively over the past year. In 2010-11, we have planned continued growth over previous years reflecting continued and increased investments to serve our mission and increase our impact.
The 2009-10 year is projected to exceed revenue targets and to be underspent in expenses primarily due to underspending in the first quarter of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Veronique
On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
The 2010-11 Annual Plan and Questions and Answers have just been posted to the Foundation website (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010-2011_fiscal_year). The plan was approved by the Board last week.
The 2010-11 plan differs from previous years in that this plan is rooted in the five-year (2010-2015) Wikimedia Strategy which has been developed collaboratively over the past year. In 2010-11, we have planned continued growth over previous years reflecting continued and increased investments to serve our mission and increase our impact.
The 2009-10 year is projected to exceed revenue targets and to be underspent in expenses primarily due to underspending in the first quarter of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Veronique
Thank you Veronique for posting this! I appreciate your continued diligence in making material available to us.
I would like to encourage everyone to be sure and actually read this plan closely; "continued growth" turns out to mean nearly doubling the staff next year, and doubling the budget -- rather surprisingly dramatic growth. There is a lot of change that is planned for here, and many of these changes relate to areas that community members do work in.
Personally, I would love to see some serious community discussion of this plan both here and at Wikimania next week.
-- phoebe
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.
The WMF has defined in its strategy that certain types of activity are left to the chapters. GLAM related activities come to mind. This means that the chapters will seek funding for exactly such projects. In the case of the Dutch chapter a project is planned about monuments and a GLAM conference is also in the planning stages.
What I am also looking for is improved support for projects like the recent Indonesian contest. They have set the standard for a competition involving universities. They doubled the number of active editors and 60% of them is female. This is the kind of ratio that compares well with the division of the genders in universities in Indonesia. This project only involved universities in Djakarta, next year could be a national competition.. When you consider that the Indonesian Wikipedias are among the fastest growing projects, I would even consider this a strategic choice.
If there is one thing that I find problematic, it is that the WMF office can be observed to operate a dual role; it is the world wide office for the Wikimedia Foundation and it behaves very much like a chapter. If there is one thing I would appreciate it would be if these two activities are separated. This would imho be best realised with the creation of an USA chapter. Thanks, GerardM
On 30 June 2010 02:33, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
The 2010-11 Annual Plan and Questions and Answers have just been posted to the Foundation website (
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010-2011_fiscal_year ).
The plan was approved by the Board last week.
The 2010-11 plan differs from previous years in that this plan is rooted in the five-year (2010-2015) Wikimedia Strategy which has been developed collaboratively over the past year. In 2010-11, we have planned continued growth over previous years reflecting continued and increased investments to serve our mission and increase our impact.
The 2009-10 year is projected to exceed revenue targets and to be underspent in expenses primarily due to underspending in the first quarter of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Veronique
Thank you Veronique for posting this! I appreciate your continued diligence in making material available to us.
I would like to encourage everyone to be sure and actually read this plan closely; "continued growth" turns out to mean nearly doubling the staff next year, and doubling the budget -- rather surprisingly dramatic growth. There is a lot of change that is planned for here, and many of these changes relate to areas that community members do work in.
Personally, I would love to see some serious community discussion of this plan both here and at Wikimania next week.
-- phoebe
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Veronique, thank you for publishing the plan, and for your work on it.
Phoebe writes:
I would like to encourage everyone to be sure and actually read this plan closely; "continued growth" turns out to mean nearly doubling the staff next year, and doubling the budget -- rather surprisingly dramatic growth. There is a lot of change that is planned for here, and many of these changes relate to areas that community members do work in.
<
Personally, I would love to see some serious community discussion of this plan both here and at Wikimania next week.
Yes, next year's planned growth is dramatic. I wish that this were being done more slowly, though I understand the desire to move decisively and effectively.
I also hope we have good public discussions, and have heard it suggested that we make time at Wikimania for large-group discussion and feedback about this and the strategy.
I do think there are more risks inherent in this sort of growth than are listed in the 'potential risks' section -- for instance, "inability to acculturate new staff due to aggressive growth" -- and we should be alert to these risks to avoid them.
The most dramatic change proposed may be the addition of many community-focused staff roles, including 3 proposed hires focused on chapter relations and development, 5 focused on community development, and 1 focused on translation coordination... I believe that these are meant to aid and facilitate the work being done in the community rather than replacing it, but preparing for this sort of change will involve a level of active collaboration between staff and community.
There are also tantalizing comments in the plan about such new initiatives in - 'staff and volunteer development' - 'awards and grants' - 'community outreach and volunteer convenings' - a 'stakeholder database'
which I expect people would like to hear more about. (will this database let me find community members in Portugal interested in wikisource and library outreach?)
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com writes:
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..).
I hope that many of us will take part in such discussions! This is one of our greatest opportunities for improvement.
What I am also looking for is improved support for projects like the recent Indonesian contest. They have set the standard for a competition involving universities. They doubled the number of active editors and 60% of them is female.
Yes. See above re: awards and grants. The Swahili contest was similarly successful (though not in terms of gender ratio; lessons to be shared!)
If there is one thing that I find problematic, it is that the WMF office can be observed to operate a dual role; it is the world wide office for the Wikimedia Foundation and it behaves very much like a chapter. If there is one thing I would appreciate it would be if these two activities are separated. This would imho be best realised with the creation of an USA chapter.
I agree. I know that Wikimedia NY has had some success, but would like to see a national chapter form.
SJ
On 30 June 2010 09:28, Samuel J Klein sj@wikimedia.org wrote:
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com writes:
If there is one thing that I find problematic, it is that the WMF office can be observed to operate a dual role; it is the world wide office for the Wikimedia Foundation and it behaves very much like a chapter. If there is one thing I would appreciate it would be if these two activities are separated. This would imho be best realised with the creation of an USA chapter.
I agree. I know that Wikimedia NY has had some success, but would like to see a national chapter form.
I agree as well. I think we need a US chapter for the good of the movement generally. Not having one distorts everything.
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
Hoi, When we raise money, we have a choice; either we spend the money and we communicate what we plan to do or we build reserves for a rainy day. In the Netherlands there are several charities that find it much harder to raise funds for any purpose now that they are known to build huge reserves. This was made worse when they wanted to raise funds after many of their investments went sour.
As I understand our finances, we forecast a great need and at the same time are frugal spending realising the communicated goals. Consequently there is an operational reserve. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a university and consequently it does not operate along those lines. Mind you, an American university is a completely different beast then for instance a Dutch university and our universities have as respectable reputation while their funding is not reliant on huge endowments.
In my opinion we are on a mission and we should share this mission as widely as possible. This is why it is not acceptable that so much of the our finances rely on USA donations. We need chapters that take part in everything that makes the WMF possible. This includes fund raising and operating programs that benefit our projects and free knowledge in general.
When people, organisations want to contribute to an endowment, they should do so separately from our fund raisers. These are to enable us to do what we aim to do. This will gain us more contributions then building large reserves. Thanks, GerardM
PS you is "the reader"
On 30 June 2010 17:38, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
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
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
It struck me that the Foundation has decided to concentrate on the large public, the small donators, and not seek much further to approach big spenders or make money by business partnerships. This is a statement not only about our history and our future, and also about our character as movement. Is it too much to call this an event of historical importance?
Kind regards Ziko
2010/6/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, When we raise money, we have a choice; either we spend the money and we communicate what we plan to do or we build reserves for a rainy day. In the Netherlands there are several charities that find it much harder to raise funds for any purpose now that they are known to build huge reserves. This was made worse when they wanted to raise funds after many of their investments went sour.
As I understand our finances, we forecast a great need and at the same time are frugal spending realising the communicated goals. Consequently there is an operational reserve. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a university and consequently it does not operate along those lines. Mind you, an American university is a completely different beast then for instance a Dutch university and our universities have as respectable reputation while their funding is not reliant on huge endowments.
In my opinion we are on a mission and we should share this mission as widely as possible. This is why it is not acceptable that so much of the our finances rely on USA donations. We need chapters that take part in everything that makes the WMF possible. This includes fund raising and operating programs that benefit our projects and free knowledge in general.
When people, organisations want to contribute to an endowment, they should do so separately from our fund raisers. These are to enable us to do what we aim to do. This will gain us more contributions then building large reserves. Thanks, GerardM
PS you is "the reader"
On 30 June 2010 17:38, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
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
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:38 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
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.
That was from me, and I obviously oversimplified my explanation in an attempt to be concise. Gerard and Ziko have already raised critical points that entered into the decision to focus on many small donors as an ongoing strategy. To expand on this, see this thread started by Sue a few weeks ago on strategy wiki:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#R...
In regards to the endowment question, as you note, the motivation for an endowment drive is long-term sustainability and some level of protection from recession. The cost of doing an endowment drive is enormous. There is usually an 18 months ramp up time simply to start the drive, and you need a huge staff to manage it. That work comes at the expense of other work. Furthermore, endowment drives also typically court high wealth donors aggressively. We do that now, but that's not our focus, and I think that a lot of good things emerge from prioritizing many small donors.
What the Financial Sustainability Task Force (with help from the Bridgespan Group) found was that:
1. Our revenue has grown significantly over the past few years, despite the recession and a tiny fundraising team that has not grown. This is because we aren't close to tapping our potential, and it also speaks to the fundraising team continually getting smarter in how it works.
2. When we compare Wikimedia Foundation to other similar nonprofits, it's clear that our potential revenue is much larger, again despite the recession.
3. In particular, our potential is huge in other countries besides the U.S., which several people have already pointed out in this thread. Courting donations in other countries has a lot of positive benefits. It helps strengthen our chapters, and it increases international participation and ownership into our projects.
In summary, it's not clear that an endowment drive is a more effective sustainability strategy than our current model, and the opportunity cost would be much higher.
If you look at the targets at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Goal:_...
you'll notice that the proposed financial goal is listed as the number of donors, not as a revenue figure. That speaks to the importance of getting many people to contribute, which I think jives well with our community's philosophy in general.
=Eugene
Thanks Eugene! This is essentially what I would've written, had I gotten there first. So thank you.
I will just add: everyone wants an endowment campaign -- the issue is not whether to do it; the issue is when to do it. We're still developing our pool of donors (especially the chapters, who are with the exception of the German chapter very new to fundraising), and we are still finding our voice when it comes to fundraising. Given that --and given that we have lots of work to do improving our service to readers, and donors are typically more motivated to fund necessary work, before they'll fund permanence -- that's why we're currently focusing on growing the number of donors. Walking before running.
And yes, Ziko, thanks for calling out the new revenue strategy: it's significant. I am really grateful that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are willing to fund the work we do: it's by far the best model for us from an ideological standpoint. Most non-profits are in two completely unrelated businesses: the business of mission activity, and the business of revenue generation ----- we are lucky that for us, mission activity and revenue generation can be 100 per cent aligned.
I am proud and happy about our new revenue strategy. We're in an enviable position, in that we don't need to make unhappy compromises -- instead, we have the luxury of being able to focus on the actual mission work we're trying to get done :-)
Thanks, Sue
-----Original Message----- From: Eugene Eric Kim eekim@blueoxen.com Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:45:49 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:38 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
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.
That was from me, and I obviously oversimplified my explanation in an attempt to be concise. Gerard and Ziko have already raised critical points that entered into the decision to focus on many small donors as an ongoing strategy. To expand on this, see this thread started by Sue a few weeks ago on strategy wiki:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#R...
In regards to the endowment question, as you note, the motivation for an endowment drive is long-term sustainability and some level of protection from recession. The cost of doing an endowment drive is enormous. There is usually an 18 months ramp up time simply to start the drive, and you need a huge staff to manage it. That work comes at the expense of other work. Furthermore, endowment drives also typically court high wealth donors aggressively. We do that now, but that's not our focus, and I think that a lot of good things emerge from prioritizing many small donors.
What the Financial Sustainability Task Force (with help from the Bridgespan Group) found was that:
1. Our revenue has grown significantly over the past few years, despite the recession and a tiny fundraising team that has not grown. This is because we aren't close to tapping our potential, and it also speaks to the fundraising team continually getting smarter in how it works.
2. When we compare Wikimedia Foundation to other similar nonprofits, it's clear that our potential revenue is much larger, again despite the recession.
3. In particular, our potential is huge in other countries besides the U.S., which several people have already pointed out in this thread. Courting donations in other countries has a lot of positive benefits. It helps strengthen our chapters, and it increases international participation and ownership into our projects.
In summary, it's not clear that an endowment drive is a more effective sustainability strategy than our current model, and the opportunity cost would be much higher.
If you look at the targets at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Goal:_...
you'll notice that the proposed financial goal is listed as the number of donors, not as a revenue figure. That speaks to the importance of getting many people to contribute, which I think jives well with our community's philosophy in general.
=Eugene
Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)).
As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We will have done some experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't know what our optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future years.
For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well. I want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the annual earnings on the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is usually a small percentage. In the past, one could estimate 8-10% earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. Alas, these days, 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it into perspective, if we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. Endowments can be very useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating budget each year.
Veronique
susanpgardner@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Eugene! This is essentially what I would've written, had I gotten there first. So thank you.
I will just add: everyone wants an endowment campaign -- the issue is not whether to do it; the issue is when to do it. We're still developing our pool of donors (especially the chapters, who are with the exception of the German chapter very new to fundraising), and we are still finding our voice when it comes to fundraising. Given that --and given that we have lots of work to do improving our service to readers, and donors are typically more motivated to fund necessary work, before they'll fund permanence -- that's why we're currently focusing on growing the number of donors. Walking before running.
And yes, Ziko, thanks for calling out the new revenue strategy: it's significant. I am really grateful that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are willing to fund the work we do: it's by far the best model for us from an ideological standpoint. Most non-profits are in two completely unrelated businesses: the business of mission activity, and the business of revenue generation ----- we are lucky that for us, mission activity and revenue generation can be 100 per cent aligned.
I am proud and happy about our new revenue strategy. We're in an enviable position, in that we don't need to make unhappy compromises -- instead, we have the luxury of being able to focus on the actual mission work we're trying to get done :-)
Thanks, Sue
-----Original Message----- From: Eugene Eric Kim eekim@blueoxen.com Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:45:49 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:38 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
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.
That was from me, and I obviously oversimplified my explanation in an attempt to be concise. Gerard and Ziko have already raised critical points that entered into the decision to focus on many small donors as an ongoing strategy. To expand on this, see this thread started by Sue a few weeks ago on strategy wiki:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#R...
In regards to the endowment question, as you note, the motivation for an endowment drive is long-term sustainability and some level of protection from recession. The cost of doing an endowment drive is enormous. There is usually an 18 months ramp up time simply to start the drive, and you need a huge staff to manage it. That work comes at the expense of other work. Furthermore, endowment drives also typically court high wealth donors aggressively. We do that now, but that's not our focus, and I think that a lot of good things emerge from prioritizing many small donors.
What the Financial Sustainability Task Force (with help from the Bridgespan Group) found was that:
- Our revenue has grown significantly over the past few years,
despite the recession and a tiny fundraising team that has not grown. This is because we aren't close to tapping our potential, and it also speaks to the fundraising team continually getting smarter in how it works.
- When we compare Wikimedia Foundation to other similar nonprofits,
it's clear that our potential revenue is much larger, again despite the recession.
- In particular, our potential is huge in other countries besides the
U.S., which several people have already pointed out in this thread. Courting donations in other countries has a lot of positive benefits. It helps strengthen our chapters, and it increases international participation and ownership into our projects.
In summary, it's not clear that an endowment drive is a more effective sustainability strategy than our current model, and the opportunity cost would be much higher.
If you look at the targets at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Goal:_...
you'll notice that the proposed financial goal is listed as the number of donors, not as a revenue figure. That speaks to the importance of getting many people to contribute, which I think jives well with our community's philosophy in general.
=Eugene
Thanks Veronique & Eugene for your comprehensive & thoughtful replies re: this issue. It seems clear that an endowment (if there is ever one developed) and good fundraising is not an either/or proposition.
There is also additional discussion going on about related topics on this talk page: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF
best, Phoebe
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)).
As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We will have done some experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't know what our optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future years.
For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well. I want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the annual earnings on the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is usually a small percentage. In the past, one could estimate 8-10% earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. Alas, these days, 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it into perspective, if we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. Endowments can be very useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating budget each year.
Veronique
susanpgardner@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Eugene! This is essentially what I would've written, had I gotten there first. So thank you.
I will just add: everyone wants an endowment campaign -- the issue is not whether to do it; the issue is when to do it. We're still developing our pool of donors (especially the chapters, who are with the exception of the German chapter very new to fundraising), and we are still finding our voice when it comes to fundraising. Given that --and given that we have lots of work to do improving our service to readers, and donors are typically more motivated to fund necessary work, before they'll fund permanence -- that's why we're currently focusing on growing the number of donors. Walking before running.
And yes, Ziko, thanks for calling out the new revenue strategy: it's significant. I am really grateful that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are willing to fund the work we do: it's by far the best model for us from an ideological standpoint. Most non-profits are in two completely unrelated businesses: the business of mission activity, and the business of revenue generation ----- we are lucky that for us, mission activity and revenue generation can be 100 per cent aligned.
I am proud and happy about our new revenue strategy. We're in an enviable position, in that we don't need to make unhappy compromises -- instead, we have the luxury of being able to focus on the actual mission work we're trying to get done :-)
Thanks, Sue
-----Original Message----- From: Eugene Eric Kim eekim@blueoxen.com Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:45:49 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:38 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
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.
That was from me, and I obviously oversimplified my explanation in an attempt to be concise. Gerard and Ziko have already raised critical points that entered into the decision to focus on many small donors as an ongoing strategy. To expand on this, see this thread started by Sue a few weeks ago on strategy wiki:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#R...
In regards to the endowment question, as you note, the motivation for an endowment drive is long-term sustainability and some level of protection from recession. The cost of doing an endowment drive is enormous. There is usually an 18 months ramp up time simply to start the drive, and you need a huge staff to manage it. That work comes at the expense of other work. Furthermore, endowment drives also typically court high wealth donors aggressively. We do that now, but that's not our focus, and I think that a lot of good things emerge from prioritizing many small donors.
What the Financial Sustainability Task Force (with help from the Bridgespan Group) found was that:
- Our revenue has grown significantly over the past few years,
despite the recession and a tiny fundraising team that has not grown. This is because we aren't close to tapping our potential, and it also speaks to the fundraising team continually getting smarter in how it works.
- When we compare Wikimedia Foundation to other similar nonprofits,
it's clear that our potential revenue is much larger, again despite the recession.
- In particular, our potential is huge in other countries besides the
U.S., which several people have already pointed out in this thread. Courting donations in other countries has a lot of positive benefits. It helps strengthen our chapters, and it increases international participation and ownership into our projects.
In summary, it's not clear that an endowment drive is a more effective sustainability strategy than our current model, and the opportunity cost would be much higher.
If you look at the targets at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Goal:_...
you'll notice that the proposed financial goal is listed as the number of donors, not as a revenue figure. That speaks to the importance of getting many people to contribute, which I think jives well with our community's philosophy in general.
=Eugene
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--- On Wed, 6/30/10, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite To: susanpgardner@gmail.com, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 3:53 PM Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)).
As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We will have done some experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't know what our optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future years.
For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well. I want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the annual earnings on the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is usually a small percentage. In the past, one could estimate 8-10% earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. Alas, these days, 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it into perspective, if we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. Endowments can be very useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating budget each year.
I don't think anyone would expect an endowment to fund all that is being done in the current budget. I have always thought of the endowment issue as being about always keeping the lights on. Ensuring that the content will remain accessible in some worst case scenario. Access is probably the weakest link in the whole copyleft paradigm. I think most of us can name examples of how contract law has locked up what copyright law couldn't touch.
WMF has not always been as stable as it is right now. Maybe it is hard for all the people who joined the movement during this upswing of stability to understand quite how some of the earlier adopters feel about the endowment. I think it is about people feeling that the work that we have all done is secure. Since the WMF is not moving in the direction of an endowment right now, it would be nice if they could highlight some other things that secure what has already been accomplished. The endowment is not about just about funding, I think it is probably also symbolic of endurance to many people. There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term. If there is not an endowment to donate towards, I think people could use something else to symbolize a commitment to the future endurance of the content that has been gathered.
Birgitte SB
We are secure because of the volunteers, not the funding. If the foundation were to disappear, the project could continue. The only funding actually necessary is for the physical operation of the project.
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- On Wed, 6/30/10, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite To: susanpgardner@gmail.com, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 3:53 PM Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)).
As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We will have done some experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't know what our optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future years.
For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well. I want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the annual earnings on the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is usually a small percentage. In the past, one could estimate 8-10% earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. Alas, these days, 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it into perspective, if we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. Endowments can be very useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating budget each year.
I don't think anyone would expect an endowment to fund all that is being done in the current budget. I have always thought of the endowment issue as being about always keeping the lights on. Ensuring that the content will remain accessible in some worst case scenario. Access is probably the weakest link in the whole copyleft paradigm. I think most of us can name examples of how contract law has locked up what copyright law couldn't touch.
WMF has not always been as stable as it is right now. Maybe it is hard for all the people who joined the movement during this upswing of stability to understand quite how some of the earlier adopters feel about the endowment. I think it is about people feeling that the work that we have all done is secure. Since the WMF is not moving in the direction of an endowment right now, it would be nice if they could highlight some other things that secure what has already been accomplished. The endowment is not about just about funding, I think it is probably also symbolic of endurance to many people. There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term. If there is not an endowment to donate towards, I think people could use something else to symbolize a commitment to the future endurance of the content that has been gathered.
Birgitte SB
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on 6/30/10 10:06 PM, David Goodman at dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
We are secure because of the volunteers, not the funding. If the foundation were to disappear, the project could continue. The only funding actually necessary is for the physical operation of the project.
Yes! Excellent insight, David.
Marc Riddell
On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- On Wed, 6/30/10, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite To: susanpgardner@gmail.com, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 3:53 PM Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)).
As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We will have done some experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't know what our optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future years.
For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well. I want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the annual earnings on the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is usually a small percentage. In the past, one could estimate 8-10% earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. Alas, these days, 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it into perspective, if we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. Endowments can be very useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating budget each year.
I don't think anyone would expect an endowment to fund all that is being done in the current budget. I have always thought of the endowment issue as being about always keeping the lights on. Ensuring that the content will remain accessible in some worst case scenario. Access is probably the weakest link in the whole copyleft paradigm. I think most of us can name examples of how contract law has locked up what copyright law couldn't touch.
WMF has not always been as stable as it is right now. Maybe it is hard for all the people who joined the movement during this upswing of stability to understand quite how some of the earlier adopters feel about the endowment. I think it is about people feeling that the work that we have all done is secure. Since the WMF is not moving in the direction of an endowment right now, it would be nice if they could highlight some other things that secure what has already been accomplished. The endowment is not about just about funding, I think it is probably also symbolic of endurance to many people. There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term. If there is not an endowment to donate towards, I think people could use something else to symbolize a commitment to the future endurance of the content that has been gathered.
Birgitte SB
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On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 4:06 AM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
We are secure because of the volunteers, not the funding. If the foundation were to disappear, the project could continue. The only funding actually necessary is for the physical operation of the project.
While it seems as the the most logical explanation is not correct, actually.
While WMF and other Wikimedia entities are more or less a democratic organizations, we are competing with capitalist entities. And capitalist entities exist while they are able to expand. Thus, we *have to* expand while we are able to do so. Fortunately, we are able to expand. Fortunately, we have much more chances to restructure ourselves when it would be needed.
Collapse is always an option. And it doesn't have to be connected with some mechanism inherent to our structure. It could be connected with mismanagement, including wrong presumptions.
Starting positions are also very important. Our starting position is: first. Collapse of WMF would lead into balkanization of the movement, with many of "third" starting positions (as the "second" projects already exist for 5+ years).
So, while the community is *much* more important, it is strongly connected to the existence of WMF, at least in this moment.
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 4:06 AM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
We are secure because of the volunteers, not the funding. If the foundation were to disappear, the project could continue. The only funding actually necessary is for the physical operation of the project.
While it seems as the the most logical explanation is not correct, actually.
While WMF and other Wikimedia entities are more or less a democratic organizations, we are competing with capitalist entities. And capitalist entities exist while they are able to expand. Thus, we *have to* expand while we are able to do so.
Who is WMF competing with?
-- John Vandenberg
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 4:06 AM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
We are secure because of the volunteers, not the funding. If the foundation were to disappear, the project could continue. The only funding actually necessary is for the physical operation of the project.
While it seems as the the most logical explanation is not correct, actually.
While WMF and other Wikimedia entities are more or less a democratic organizations, we are competing with capitalist entities. And capitalist entities exist while they are able to expand. Thus, we *have to* expand while we are able to do so.
Who is WMF competing with?
User attention.
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Who is WMF competing with?
User attention.
Sorry, misread "who" with "what".
Presently, with top ~20 sites for user attention.
On 1 July 2010 10:37, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Who is WMF competing with?
User attention.
Sorry, misread "who" with "what".
Presently, with top ~20 sites for user attention.
Top 20 sites are things like Google (from which we get a large portion of our hits), Yahoo and Facebook. They aren't really competitors. They are in completely different markets.
We are not competing with any other web site, or organization, and there is no reason for us to think of it that way. We are part of the capitalist world only in the sense that our physical operations must exist within it.
We are trying to build a particular project for a common purpose--not to rank among the best or most widely used sites on the web, but to provide the best free encyclopedia that our method of working can provide. Other online encyclopedias are not our competitors: they are rather synergistic. Citizendium is perhaps most valuable for having showed us a path we should not follow--elaborate bureaucracy and expert editing--but in a more positive sense did highlight the need for us to improve article quality. That Baidu is more widely used by its target audience is to some extent due to political and censorship considerations, but is also due to its greater size , and shows the importance of having very wide-ranging content of importance to the users.
There is however a sense in which our very wide use is beneficial, and our rank among web sites is important for morale: we want to know that our work is being used. But whether we are 5th or 10th does not matter. It does not affect our usefulness or our value. it might to some extent cause some public interest, and thus attract users--but they will remain users if they find what they want, not because of our relative position.
The only sense in which we compete is that our project competes for the pool of available and interested volunteer workers. We will grow better by increasing the total pool, by showing the success of such efforts and styles of operation as ours. The more such projects, the more people will be interested in them overall. Even in the commercial world, the success of automobile or computer companies lay primarily in increasing the demand for automobiles or computers, and only secondarily by competing against each other.
The basic reason why doing things by staff rather than volunteers is wrong is that it decreases one of the motivations for volunteering--the knowledge that one can participate significantly in not just the work but the decisions, and become influential in whatever activity within the project that one chooses.
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:58 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Who is WMF competing with?
User attention.
Sorry, misread "who" with "what".
Presently, with top ~20 sites for user attention.
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On 1 July 2010 16:57, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Citizendium is perhaps most valuable for having showed us a path we should not follow--elaborate bureaucracy and expert editing--but in a more positive sense did highlight the need for us to improve article quality.
Citizendium's bureaucracy and expert editing weren't the main reason for its failure. The main reason was that Wikipedia already existed. For all we know, Citizendium's approach may have been better than ours (although personally I doubt it), but it wasn't sufficiently better for people to switch from Wikipedia, which was already very successful.
I would say the biggest reason why Wikipedia is still top dog would probably be "anyone can edit" combined with timing.
________________________________ From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, July 1, 2010 9:01:47 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
On 1 July 2010 16:57, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Citizendium is perhaps most valuable for having showed us a path we should not follow--elaborate bureaucracy and expert editing--but in a more positive sense did highlight the need for us to improve article quality.
Citizendium's bureaucracy and expert editing weren't the main reason for its failure. The main reason was that Wikipedia already existed. For all we know, Citizendium's approach may have been better than ours (although personally I doubt it), but it wasn't sufficiently better for people to switch from Wikipedia, which was already very successful.
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--- On Thu, 7/1/10, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
The basic reason why doing things by staff rather than volunteers is wrong is that it decreases one of the motivations for volunteering--the knowledge that one can participate significantly in not just the work but the decisions, and become influential in whatever activity within the project that one chooses.
There is a danger in doing things by staff rather than volunteer but I cannot agree that it is always wrong.
Volunteers do not always emerge. There are real logistical and cultural barriers that prevent the proven template of projects wholly launched and directed by self-selected volunteers from succeeding in the global south. Should we just say that it is too bad that they can't get with our program? Or should we experiment with another template that might make those wikis succeed? I don't think that using staff there to be a bad idea.
I don't think staff replacing what volunteers are doing to be a big problem with WMF. Mostly they seem to be doing things that volunteers are *not* doing.
I do understand your point about volunteers needing to be influential and empowered in order for the model to work. But frankly I think your concern is based on an assumption that the WMF is more influential than it really is. I don’t think that WMF’s failure to engage better with volunteers is harmful to the motivation of the volunteers, but rather it is harmful to the WMF. If the WMF is often an outside party to the volunteers for all practical purposes, at least is an outside party well aligned with goals of the volunteers. And if that ever fails to be true it is not the volunteers that I think would be driven away.
Birgitte SB
I blogged a range of disaster scenarios a few years ago:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/04/10/disaster-recovery-planning/
The WMF looked a lot less solid then than it does now.
At least we have a full history dump from en: now. Probably.
Can we reasonably say that everything else on the list there is a solved problem we don't have to worry about?
- d.
On 1 July 2010 09:58, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Who is WMF competing with?
Hudong
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 1:52 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1 July 2010 09:58, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Who is WMF competing with?
Hudong
Or maybe Knol. Anyone remember Knol?
-Chad
Hudong comes maybe the nearest. And Hudong is doing a lot of mobilization works in China. A few days ago there were rumours in Chinese chatrooms about an expansion of Hudong direction Australia.
Greetings Ting
geni wrote:
On 1 July 2010 09:58, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Who is WMF competing with?
Hudong
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
The endowment is not about just about funding, I think it is probably also symbolic of endurance to many people. There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term. If there is not an endowment to donate towards, I think people could use something else to symbolize a commitment to the future endurance of the content that has been gathered.
Commitment is a good way of framing this. Our last fundraiser focused on preserving the projects 'FOREVER'. Those inspired by that idea will be happy to see explicitly how we are pursuing it.
For instance, a clear commitment to maintaining the physical operation of the projects for the next 50 years, even if all sources of funding were to dry up. Or a commitment to maintaining this with infrastructure distributed across multiple jurisdictions. Or support for a git-like solution for distributed synchronization of a number of different hosts. There are a number of reasons to want this -- effective collaboration across an offline network, easier incremental updates, easier maintenance of customized forks which still contribute most of their updates back to the global pool, and more robust distribution of the global project.
That's what I would imagine being supported by an 'endowment': the work that is necessary for very long-term sustenance of the projects. Much of this doesn't have to be supported with dedicated funds; it could also be covered by an organized network of mirrors and backups, redundant sources of hosting and bandwidth support, and other failsafes.
David Gerard writes:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/04/10/disaster-recovery-planning/
< Can we reasonably say that everything else on the list there is a
solved problem we don't have to worry about?
I wonder how robustly the user database is backed up / whether it's in multiple data centers. You're right that our role as identity-verifier for our millions of users is important.
SJ
On 3 July 2010 17:35, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote: David Gerard writes:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/04/10/disaster-recovery-planning/ Can we reasonably say that everything else on the list there is a solved problem we don't have to worry about?
I wonder how robustly the user database is backed up / whether it's in multiple data centers.
Talking to Danese yesterday, she is keenly aware of this stuff and how the Tampa data centre is one hurricane away from disappearing! Hence plans for a redundant data centre in Virginia, etc.
You're right that our role as identity-verifier for our millions of users is important.
That's getting into more esoteric threat models, e.g. protecting reusers from an insane contributor, or protecting contributors from a malicious reuser. But the data we hold but don't put into the public dumps is really very important stuff.
- d.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
If something of similar consequences as the kill switch [1] were triggered against the WMF in USA, would it still be accessible for the rest of the world?
[1]: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/obama-internet-kill-switch-...
On 03/07/2010 18:54, David Gerard wrote:
On 3 July 2010 17:35, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote: David Gerard writes:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/04/10/disaster-recovery-planning/ Can we reasonably say that everything else on the list there is a solved problem we don't have to worry about?
I wonder how robustly the user database is backed up / whether it's in multiple data centers.
Talking to Danese yesterday, she is keenly aware of this stuff and how the Tampa data centre is one hurricane away from disappearing! Hence plans for a redundant data centre in Virginia, etc.
You're right that our role as identity-verifier for our millions of users is important.
That's getting into more esoteric threat models, e.g. protecting reusers from an insane contributor, or protecting contributors from a malicious reuser. But the data we hold but don't put into the public dumps is really very important stuff.
- d.
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On 3 July 2010 18:53, Noein pronoein@gmail.com wrote:
If something of similar consequences as the kill switch [1] were triggered against the WMF in USA, would it still be accessible for the rest of the world?
The "kill switch" idea, as I understand it, is about killing the internet entirely, not one site. If the US government shuts down all the parts of the internet that are under its jurisdiction, the internet would pretty collapse worldwide (due to so much of the DNS infrastructure, for example, being in the US) and Wikipedia would go with it.
If the US government took action to shut down just the WMF sites then there isn't much that could be done - the WMF is a US registered, US based organisation and most of the servers are on US soil. I think even the servers in Amsterdam could be forcibly shut down, since they are still owned by a US organisation. The US authorities can't do anything about copies of the server dumps by people not under US jurisdiction, though, so a new WMF incorporated and based somewhere else could be created and take over.
On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
For instance, a clear commitment to maintaining the physical operation of the projects for the next 50 years, even if all sources of funding were to dry up. Or a commitment to maintaining this with infrastructure distributed across multiple jurisdictions. Or support for a git-like solution for distributed synchronization of a number of different hosts. There are a number of reasons to want this -- effective collaboration across an offline network, easier incremental updates, easier maintenance of customized forks which still contribute most of their updates back to the global pool, and more robust distribution of the global project.
Hm, well, I think this gets back to David Goodman's point, one which I agree with.
Yes, the only absolute commitment the WMF has in the grand scheme of things is to provide the physical resource to host the projects. However, this all began as a side project on Bomis servers. If it had gone belly up before the Foundation was established, volunteers would have forked the content and found other hosting providers, not just tossed in the towel. I think it is fair to say that volunteers would still do this- locate and finance the resources independently. It would cause splintering, because of anticipated control issues,and all that comes with forks and the prongs each being pointy.
I guess my point is that ultimately I would rather see the WMF focus on using its resources to provide free educational materials as actively as possible and disseminating them as far as possible rather than build a war chest. If the shit were to hit the fan, volunteers would still step up.
On 3 July 2010 18:29, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hm, well, I think this gets back to David Goodman's point, one which I agree with.
Yes, the only absolute commitment the WMF has in the grand scheme of things is to provide the physical resource to host the projects. However, this all began as a side project on Bomis servers. If it had gone belly up before the Foundation was established, volunteers would have forked the content and found other hosting providers, not just tossed in the towel. I think it is fair to say that volunteers would still do this- locate and finance the resources independently. It would cause splintering, because of anticipated control issues,and all that comes with forks and the prongs each being pointy.
I guess my point is that ultimately I would rather see the WMF focus on using its resources to provide free educational materials as actively as possible and disseminating them as far as possible rather than build a war chest. If the shit were to hit the fan, volunteers would still step up.
When Bomis was hosting it, it was just a handful of servers. Volunteers wouldn't be able to fork the site and keep things going at anywhere near the level they are at now - if the WMF doesn't have the funds, neither will the community. You can't host a top 5 website on a server in your spare room.
On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
When Bomis was hosting it, it was just a handful of servers. Volunteers wouldn't be able to fork the site and keep things going at anywhere near the level they are at now - if the WMF doesn't have the funds, neither will the community. You can't host a top 5 website on a server in your spare room.
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Naturally. A collapse would be a collapse. It wouldn't die though, just need a good rest[1]. That's my point.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens
Hoi, I am afraid that a drive to have funding for the next fifty years will be extremely counter productive. It is this kind of arguments that has turned off many of the people who contribute to charities in the Netherlands. The notion that we should have reserves for the next fifty years assumes that our current level of service is adequate. Even that is not the case.
It has been argued in the past that when we truly need money. Money for something that can be properly identified that we only need to ask. I strongly believe that this is the case.
Last year I was told that the WMF could not manage more projects. The case that was made was proper. This year we are as ambitious and there is still a lot that we need to do if we want to reach out to every person on this earth. This needs its funding and we will work hard to get the associated funding. When we are frugal and build reserves, this will be appreciated. When we build reserves that have no immediate goals, we will lose acceptance as an organisation that actually needs the money.
So by all means feel that an endowment is a good thing but be warned that once people have the feeling that WMF has plenty of reserves their feeling that the WMF deserves their money will not get reconsideration. Thanks, GerardM
On 3 July 2010 18:35, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
The endowment is not about just about funding, I think it is probably
also symbolic of endurance to many people.
There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term.
If there is not an endowment to donate towards,
I think people could use something else to symbolize a commitment to the
future endurance of the content that has been gathered.
Commitment is a good way of framing this. Our last fundraiser focused on preserving the projects 'FOREVER'. Those inspired by that idea will be happy to see explicitly how we are pursuing it.
For instance, a clear commitment to maintaining the physical operation of the projects for the next 50 years, even if all sources of funding were to dry up. Or a commitment to maintaining this with infrastructure distributed across multiple jurisdictions. Or support for a git-like solution for distributed synchronization of a number of different hosts. There are a number of reasons to want this -- effective collaboration across an offline network, easier incremental updates, easier maintenance of customized forks which still contribute most of their updates back to the global pool, and more robust distribution of the global project.
That's what I would imagine being supported by an 'endowment': the work that is necessary for very long-term sustenance of the projects. Much of this doesn't have to be supported with dedicated funds; it could also be covered by an organized network of mirrors and backups, redundant sources of hosting and bandwidth support, and other failsafes.
David Gerard writes:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/04/10/disaster-recovery-planning/
< Can we reasonably say that everything else on the list there is a
solved problem we don't have to worry about?
I wonder how robustly the user database is backed up / whether it's in multiple data centers. You're right that our role as identity-verifier for our millions of users is important.
SJ
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On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When we are frugal and build reserves, this will be appreciated. When we build reserves that have no immediate goals, we will lose acceptance as an organisation that actually needs the money.
I agree we should have specific goals for resources, both short- and long-term. The reason to allocate a fund for long-term infrastructure support, is to avoid confusing that with generic reserves (with "no immediate goals").
It is true that, if there are no other major crises happening at the same time, people will step up anytime there is a real need to help Wikipedia. But part of our duty is to prepare for a major crisis as well (one in which most of our supporters will have their own personal troubles).
Thomas Dalton writes:
The "kill switch" idea, as I understand it, is about killing the internet entirely, not one site. If the US government shuts down all the parts of the internet that are under its jurisdiction, the internet would pretty collapse worldwide
The Internet is a bit more robust than this. At any rate, Wikipedia should be so widely mirrored by local groups that it would still be available on local networks if the global Internet became unavailable. "One country taking down the Internet" isn't so likely, but one country being cut off is. Today there are entire countries that have a single provider connecting them to the rest of the world; with cheap internal connectivity within the country but expensive connectivity to the Internet as a whole. A focused effort to increase our network of local mirrors could minimize this effect.
Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia.
SJ
Hoi, One of the reasons, for many the only reason for giving a\t the annual fundraising drive is exactly to provide money to maintain our infrastructure. Take that away and you take away the reason to give. Once people get it in their mind that we have reserves to pay for our infrastructure, they will remember this and not support us for our other goals.
In my honest opinion, building an endowment as suggested will be a mistake that we will regret. When the giving sentiment turns against us it will be next to impossible to change it again. If you seek assurances, there are other methods that will not be damaging in this way. Thanks, GerardM
On 5 July 2010 10:48, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When we are frugal and build reserves, this will be appreciated. When we
build
reserves that have no immediate goals, we will lose acceptance as an
organisation
that actually needs the money.
I agree we should have specific goals for resources, both short- and long-term. The reason to allocate a fund for long-term infrastructure support, is to avoid confusing that with generic reserves (with "no immediate goals").
It is true that, if there are no other major crises happening at the same time, people will step up anytime there is a real need to help Wikipedia. But part of our duty is to prepare for a major crisis as well (one in which most of our supporters will have their own personal troubles).
Thomas Dalton writes:
The "kill switch" idea, as I understand it, is about killing the internet entirely, not one site. If the US government shuts down all the parts of the internet that are under its jurisdiction, the internet would pretty collapse worldwide
The Internet is a bit more robust than this. At any rate, Wikipedia should be so widely mirrored by local groups that it would still be available on local networks if the global Internet became unavailable. "One country taking down the Internet" isn't so likely, but one country being cut off is. Today there are entire countries that have a single provider connecting them to the rest of the world; with cheap internal connectivity within the country but expensive connectivity to the Internet as a whole. A focused effort to increase our network of local mirrors could minimize this effect.
Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia.
SJ
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Hi Gerard,
On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, One of the reasons, for many the only reason for giving a\t the annual fundraising drive is exactly to provide money to maintain our infrastructure. Take that away and you take away the reason to give. Once people get it in their mind that we have reserves to pay for our infrastructure, they will remember this and not support us for our other goals.
In my experience, donor motivation is much more complex than that. While the donor survey is still in preparation, anecdotal evidence suggests that donors do not just provide donations to cover our infrastructure but also, for example,
- as a voluntary payment for using Wikipedia - as an act of charity to support education for people not typically provided with decent educational material (i.e. the economically disadvantaged) - as an act of appreciation for the work of thousands of volunteers
Setting up an endowment to cover part of the fixed costs of running the Wikimedia projects is something that IMHO is definitely sellable to donors. Check also the rationales given at the moment for not pursuing an endowment: they are not related to donor motivation but rather to effort required, opportunity cost involved, and funding sources cannibalized.
In general, I think the arguments made against pursuing a general endowment are sound, at least for the moment. For an endowment to be meaningful, it needs to be fairly big. Let's say that we want to cover half of the current year's technology budget (about $1.65 million) and we can expect an annual ROI of 5%. The endowment would have to be at least $33 million to cover that.
That's not an impossible amount to raise, in general, but it's definitely not easy. You would have to spread this out over several years considering that our existing donor base doesn't yield that sort of revenue. So it might take you, let's say, five years to get this together. Now it's 2016 and you've got a $33 million endowment yielding $1.65 million payout. Yet, from all we can tell at the moment, our tech budget won't be anywhere near $3.3 million in 2016 (it's already planned to be $9.8 million in 2011). So what to do?
Personally, I think we should an endowment drive when we've found our donation revenue, but also our operational spending to approximately level off. We are in a period of rapid operational growth, which will end eventually. When that happens, we will have a better understanding of our own actual financial need as well as our worldwide fundraising potential. Until then, let's focus on what has the most benefit at the least cost which, as it turns out for the moment, is community giving.
Best regards,
Sebastian Moleski President Wikimedia Deutschland
Hoi, I agree that donors are happy to provide to these other goals as well. The issue is however that they go together with the essential goal of keeping our infra structure running. Take away the essentials from the equation, give the impression that there are plenty of reserves and the need can no longer be properly communicated.
I know of charities who lost money because of the economic downturn and lost their ability to raise funds at the same time. Having large reserves and protecting them from inflation is really hard. Why should people give hard currency only to see its value diminish over time ?
The best other argument against going for an endowment is that we do not even provide proper support for our projects as it is. At this time we do not support projects other then Wikipedia related, we do not support our volunteer developers (when they do not work on the centrally managed projects).. we do not support the technical needs for many of our languages. Thanks, Gerard
On 5 July 2010 11:31, Sebastian Moleski info@sebmol.me wrote:
Hi Gerard,
On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, One of the reasons, for many the only reason for giving a\t the annual fundraising drive is exactly to provide money to maintain our infrastructure. Take that away and you take away the reason to give. Once people get it in their mind that we have reserves to pay for our infrastructure, they will remember this and not support us for our other goals.
In my experience, donor motivation is much more complex than that. While the donor survey is still in preparation, anecdotal evidence suggests that donors do not just provide donations to cover our infrastructure but also, for example,
- as a voluntary payment for using Wikipedia
- as an act of charity to support education for people not typically
provided with decent educational material (i.e. the economically disadvantaged)
- as an act of appreciation for the work of thousands of volunteers
Setting up an endowment to cover part of the fixed costs of running the Wikimedia projects is something that IMHO is definitely sellable to donors. Check also the rationales given at the moment for not pursuing an endowment: they are not related to donor motivation but rather to effort required, opportunity cost involved, and funding sources cannibalized.
In general, I think the arguments made against pursuing a general endowment are sound, at least for the moment. For an endowment to be meaningful, it needs to be fairly big. Let's say that we want to cover half of the current year's technology budget (about $1.65 million) and we can expect an annual ROI of 5%. The endowment would have to be at least $33 million to cover that.
That's not an impossible amount to raise, in general, but it's definitely not easy. You would have to spread this out over several years considering that our existing donor base doesn't yield that sort of revenue. So it might take you, let's say, five years to get this together. Now it's 2016 and you've got a $33 million endowment yielding $1.65 million payout. Yet, from all we can tell at the moment, our tech budget won't be anywhere near $3.3 million in 2016 (it's already planned to be $9.8 million in 2011). So what to do?
Personally, I think we should an endowment drive when we've found our donation revenue, but also our operational spending to approximately level off. We are in a period of rapid operational growth, which will end eventually. When that happens, we will have a better understanding of our own actual financial need as well as our worldwide fundraising potential. Until then, let's focus on what has the most benefit at the least cost which, as it turns out for the moment, is community giving.
Best regards,
Sebastian Moleski President Wikimedia Deutschland _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hello,
On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 4:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
One of the reasons, for many the only reason for giving a\t the annual fundraising drive is exactly to provide money to maintain our infrastructure. Take that away and you take away the reason to give.
That's a bit like the old joke that the best way to raise money is to take the site down. Yes, it works, but with some essential drawbacks :-) We're not holding the servers ransom.
If you seek assurances, there are other methods that will not be damaging in this way.
I'd like to hear what you have in mind.
Yes, there are other ways to improve reliability and long-term support. (As you often point out, projects other than Wikipedia are at more risk than WP.)
Sebastian Moleski writes:
Let's say that we want to cover half of the current year's technology budget
I would start with one aspect of fundamental infrastructure, and build out from there as a dedicated fund grows. For instance, start with our downloads and live-feed infrastructure, and that portion of our bandwidth. We might be able to cover that with half the interest from our current reserve. Moreover, making it a priority for us to be *able* to support this from a dedicated fund would encourage a focus on reducing the costs of the most-critical infrastructure.
As an example: we do not make a point of setting up torrents of our large files. This would both increase download speed for many downloaders (improve our core service) and reduce our central costs.
Sebastian writes:
In general, I think the arguments made against pursuing a general endowment are sound, at least for the moment.
<
Personally, I think we should an endowment drive when we've found our donation revenue, but also our operational spending to approximately level off.
One can always keep increasing operational spending. Reserves or long-term funds should grow in tandem with those increases -- otherwise as we come to rely on this new spending, there is additional risk that efforts may collapse if funding dries up. Example: the coming year's Annual Plan includes a 50% drop in our effective reserve -- the reserve is staying the same while the annual budget doubles.
Regardless of what we do with reserves and long-term funds, keeping the projects online forever was the premise of the last fundraiser. We have an immediate obligation to make progress towards that goal. A new datacenter will help, but I'd like to see specific long-term forecasts and plans published.
SJ
Hi Samuel,
On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Samuel J Klein sj@wikimedia.org wrote:
One can always keep increasing operational spending. Reserves or long-term funds should grow in tandem with those increases -- otherwise as we come to rely on this new spending, there is additional risk that efforts may collapse if funding dries up. Example: the coming year's Annual Plan includes a 50% drop in our effective reserve -- the reserve is staying the same while the annual budget doubles.
My point was that working on an endowment at the current situation isn't a very sensible thing to do. An endowment isn't a reserve, though, so I'm not sure where the two are related here. The former is a means to generate revenue, the later a means to handle revenue shortfalls.
It makes sense of course to have your reserves grow with your spending. Neither I nor anyone else was advocating something different.
Regardless of what we do with reserves and long-term funds, keeping the projects online forever was the premise of the last fundraiser. We have an immediate obligation to make progress towards that goal. A new datacenter will help, but I'd like to see specific long-term forecasts and plans published.
Isn't the strategy project providing just that?
Best regards,
Sebastian Moleski President Wikimedia Deutschland
Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given to such institutions containing a copy! :P.
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@gmail.com
wrote:
Samuel Klein wrote:
Every national and regional library should have a local copy of
Wikimedia.
With a full history dump?
;-)
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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I have gone trough the report, and immediately noted the extremely strong growth of the foundation in terms of personal (Nearly doubling the amount two years in a row). Generally i am not a fan of such fast growth as it often leads to bloating; but seeing the the rest of the plan looks fine i presume i am just viewing things to black and white.
One particular detail in the "Top Spending Increases, continued" section raised some question marks for me though. There is a 2.6 million dollar increase in the "Other tech staffing and stakeholder database" category. I can understand the 10 new tech position and the annualization of existing tech salaries paid by this increase, but what role will the stakeholder database have? The description, "development of a database to track relationships with all stakeholders including readers, editors, donors, other volunteers, etc." is rather vague and includes no real indication as to its purpose. What exactly will it track, and what will the information be used for? Since there are so many editors on-wiki i doubt that this will be used as a full-fledged CRM (customer relationship management) system used to track literally everything. All i can imagine is that it could track top level community issues such as flagged revisions or OTRS complains.
Anyone who has some more information on this system? I'm quite interested to be honest.
Kind regards, ~Excirial
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.comwrote:
Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given to such institutions containing a copy! :P.
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen < cimonavaro@gmail.com
wrote:
Samuel Klein wrote:
Every national and regional library should have a local copy of
Wikimedia.
With a full history dump?
;-)
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Hiya -
I asked Danese, who is currently buried under about 20 pounds of stuff after coming back from Wikimania, to further describe the stakeholder database. Her response is:
Sue has a vision for a single master database that tracks our interactions with movement participants. It is intended to help us better respond to requests from individuals by joining all the info we have from prior interactions with that person. This will be particularly important as we grow the staff, because current onboarding time requires long "buddy system" pairings with existing staff to teach how to best interact. So for instance, if you have had a Wikipedia account since 2005, have made enough edits to become, say, an Admin, have uploaded 100 images to Commons, have been a donor every year and have responded helpfully to many OTRS requests, there should be a quick way for a new staffer to learn those facts. All of this information is available to the staff now, just not in an aggregated place.
Danese
On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:41 PM, Excirial wrote:
I have gone trough the report, and immediately noted the extremely strong growth of the foundation in terms of personal (Nearly doubling the amount two years in a row). Generally i am not a fan of such fast growth as it often leads to bloating; but seeing the the rest of the plan looks fine i presume i am just viewing things to black and white.
One particular detail in the "Top Spending Increases, continued" section raised some question marks for me though. There is a 2.6 million dollar increase in the "Other tech staffing and stakeholder database" category. I can understand the 10 new tech position and the annualization of existing tech salaries paid by this increase, but what role will the stakeholder database have? The description, "development of a database to track relationships with all stakeholders including readers, editors, donors, other volunteers, etc." is rather vague and includes no real indication as to its purpose. What exactly will it track, and what will the information be used for? Since there are so many editors on-wiki i doubt that this will be used as a full-fledged CRM (customer relationship management) system used to track literally everything. All i can imagine is that it could track top level community issues such as flagged revisions or OTRS complains.
Anyone who has some more information on this system? I'm quite interested to be honest.
Kind regards, ~Excirial
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.comwrote:
Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given to such institutions containing a copy! :P.
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen < cimonavaro@gmail.com
wrote:
Samuel Klein wrote:
Every national and regional library should have a local copy of
Wikimedia.
With a full history dump?
;-)
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l
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On 15 July 2010 22:35, Philippe Beaudette pbeaudette@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hiya -
I asked Danese, who is currently buried under about 20 pounds of stuff after coming back from Wikimania, to further describe the stakeholder database. Her response is:
Sue has a vision for a single master database that tracks our interactions with movement participants. It is intended to help us better respond to requests from individuals by joining all the info we have from prior interactions with that person. This will be particularly important as we grow the staff, because current onboarding time requires long "buddy system" pairings with existing staff to teach how to best interact. So for instance, if you have had a Wikipedia account since 2005, have made enough edits to become, say, an Admin, have uploaded 100 images to Commons, have been a donor every year and have responded helpfully to many OTRS requests, there should be a quick way for a new staffer to learn those facts. All of this information is available to the staff now, just not in an aggregated place.
Danese
I had understood that another use-case for such a database is when an
external organisation (e.g. a local library in some city where there is no Chapter presence) asks for a local Wikimedian to come and give a presentation or advice on how to get involved. Such a database (IIRC) should be able to produce a list of people who a) live in that local area, b) are happy/able to give public presentations and c) know about the specific subject being requested e.g. Wikisource.
-Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
I had understood that another use-case for such a database is when an
external organisation (e.g. a local library in some city where there is no Chapter presence) asks for a local Wikimedian to come and give a presentation or advice on how to get involved. Such a database (IIRC) should be able to produce a list of people who a) live in that local area, b) are happy/able to give public presentations and c) know about the specific subject being requested e.g. Wikisource.
-Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
Sure. There are about a bajillion use cases for it. :)
pb
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Philippe Beaudette < pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Sure. There are about a bajillion use cases for it. :)
pb
<conspiracy> The foundation just likes to spy on us ;) dirt for later on if we won't protect that page! </conspiracy>
James [redacted for protection] james.[redacted for protection]@rochester.edu jamesofur@gmail.com
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:31 PM, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.comwrote:
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Philippe Beaudette < pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Sure. There are about a bajillion use cases for it. :)
pb
<conspiracy> The foundation just likes to spy on us ;) dirt for later on if we won't protect that page! </conspiracy>
James [redacted for protection] james.[redacted for protection]@rochester.edu jamesofur@gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
We're the spies, not the Foundation.
On 6/30/10 1:16 AM, Veronique Kessler wrote:
Hi,
The 2010-11 Annual Plan and Questions and Answers have just been posted to the Foundation website (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010-2011_fiscal_year). The plan was approved by the Board last week.
The 2010-11 plan differs from previous years in that this plan is rooted in the five-year (2010-2015) Wikimedia Strategy which has been developed collaboratively over the past year. In 2010-11, we have planned continued growth over previous years reflecting continued and increased investments to serve our mission and increase our impact.
The 2009-10 year is projected to exceed revenue targets and to be underspent in expenses primarily due to underspending in the first quarter of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Veronique
Hello
A couple of late questions.
Short background to explain the reasons of my two questions: I am in the process of writing a short piece about the way Wikipedia is funded. Whilst I was digging information, and read again the Annual Plan, two questions popped in my mind.
1) Do I understand well that "earned income" include trademarks agreements ? If that is so, does that mean that the agreements passed with Telco companies for the use of the Wikipedia brand, such as the Orange deal, are included in the earned income listed for example on slide 39 for "earned income" in projected 2009/2010 ? Or are these revenus listed elsewhere ?
2) You are maybe aware that some chapter members (deeply) regret that chapters are not listed as revenu sources in the annual plan and I hope that this will be fixed in the future. But meanwhile... are the revenus to be collected by the chapters and transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation counted in the current annual plan ? or were they not listed at all as WMF is not yet sure practical solutions will be found to transfer money from chapters to the WMF ? Or if the money coming from chapters are listed, is it counted as "donations below 10K" or as "donations above 10K" ? Both would make sense (but both would be misleading) as a chapter as an entity would probably transfer more than 10K to WMF, but also as this money in most cases come from small donations. What was your choice for year 2010/2011 ?
Ant
Hi Florence,
I know Veronique plans to respond to your note, but I have two seconds right now, so I will add a quick comment below.
On 23 July 2010 11:18, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
- You are maybe aware that some chapter members (deeply) regret that
chapters are not listed as revenu sources in the annual plan and I hope that this will be fixed in the future. But meanwhile... are the revenus to be collected by the chapters and transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation counted in the current annual plan ? or were they not listed at all as WMF is not yet sure practical solutions will be found to transfer money from chapters to the WMF ? Or if the money coming from chapters are listed, is it counted as "donations below 10K" or as "donations above 10K" ?
I had no idea that the chapters had a view on their inclusion / lack of inclusion in the annual plan -- interesting!
Yes, there is some 'plug' in the plan for chapters revenues. It is a ballpark figure -- Veronique will tell us how much. It's based on the assumption that chapters will continue to fundraise, and that their ability to raise money will increase over time. At the same time, that is balanced against the Foundation's reluctance to count on the money too much, because it is far from guaranteed. Basically: we don't have information about chapters' plans/goals/targets (if they have them), and it's not uncommon for chapters to have difficulty transferring money to the Foundation. So for 2010-11, we have a plug, in community giving (since the money originates as small donations). My hope and my expectation is that as time goes on, the chapters' --and everyone's-- ability to plan and predict will increase, and we will work out the money-transferring difficulties, which will enable the Foundation to be able to be confident relying on the chapters' fundraising as part of our targets.
Sorry this note is kind of choppy: I'm replying fast as I run out the door :-)
Thanks, Sue
Hi there,
Yes, we put $500K in the Community gifts goal from the Chapters. I too had no idea that Chapters would be looking to see this spelled out in the plan so that is interesting information.
Yes, the earned income does represent revenue from trademark deals.
Veronique
Sue Gardner wrote:
Hi Florence,
I know Veronique plans to respond to your note, but I have two seconds right now, so I will add a quick comment below.
On 23 July 2010 11:18, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
- You are maybe aware that some chapter members (deeply) regret that
chapters are not listed as revenu sources in the annual plan and I hope that this will be fixed in the future. But meanwhile... are the revenus to be collected by the chapters and transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation counted in the current annual plan ? or were they not listed at all as WMF is not yet sure practical solutions will be found to transfer money from chapters to the WMF ? Or if the money coming from chapters are listed, is it counted as "donations below 10K" or as "donations above 10K" ?
I had no idea that the chapters had a view on their inclusion / lack of inclusion in the annual plan -- interesting!
Yes, there is some 'plug' in the plan for chapters revenues. It is a ballpark figure -- Veronique will tell us how much. It's based on the assumption that chapters will continue to fundraise, and that their ability to raise money will increase over time. At the same time, that is balanced against the Foundation's reluctance to count on the money too much, because it is far from guaranteed. Basically: we don't have information about chapters' plans/goals/targets (if they have them), and it's not uncommon for chapters to have difficulty transferring money to the Foundation. So for 2010-11, we have a plug, in community giving (since the money originates as small donations). My hope and my expectation is that as time goes on, the chapters' --and everyone's-- ability to plan and predict will increase, and we will work out the money-transferring difficulties, which will enable the Foundation to be able to be confident relying on the chapters' fundraising as part of our targets.
Sorry this note is kind of choppy: I'm replying fast as I run out the door :-)
Thanks, Sue
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Thanks for the quick answer Sue. I'll comment afterwards when I get Veronique further comments next week.
Florence
On 7/23/10 10:37 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:
Hi Florence,
I know Veronique plans to respond to your note, but I have two seconds right now, so I will add a quick comment below.
On 23 July 2010 11:18, Florence DevouardAnthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
- You are maybe aware that some chapter members (deeply) regret that
chapters are not listed as revenu sources in the annual plan and I hope that this will be fixed in the future. But meanwhile... are the revenus to be collected by the chapters and transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation counted in the current annual plan ? or were they not listed at all as WMF is not yet sure practical solutions will be found to transfer money from chapters to the WMF ? Or if the money coming from chapters are listed, is it counted as "donations below 10K" or as "donations above 10K" ?
I had no idea that the chapters had a view on their inclusion / lack of inclusion in the annual plan -- interesting!
Yes, there is some 'plug' in the plan for chapters revenues. It is a ballpark figure -- Veronique will tell us how much. It's based on the assumption that chapters will continue to fundraise, and that their ability to raise money will increase over time. At the same time, that is balanced against the Foundation's reluctance to count on the money too much, because it is far from guaranteed. Basically: we don't have information about chapters' plans/goals/targets (if they have them), and it's not uncommon for chapters to have difficulty transferring money to the Foundation. So for 2010-11, we have a plug, in community giving (since the money originates as small donations). My hope and my expectation is that as time goes on, the chapters' --and everyone's-- ability to plan and predict will increase, and we will work out the money-transferring difficulties, which will enable the Foundation to be able to be confident relying on the chapters' fundraising as part of our targets.
Sorry this note is kind of choppy: I'm replying fast as I run out the door :-)
Thanks, Sue
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