*Brin Wojcicki Foundation Announces $500,000 Grant to Wikimedia*
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – November 18, 2011 – The Brin Wojcicki Foundation,
started by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe co-founder Anne
Wojcicki, awarded a $500,000 grant to the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs
Wikipedia and its sister sites. The Wikimedia Foundation kicked off its 8th
annual fundraiser on November 16, 2011.
The Wikimedia projects currently reach more than 477 million unique
visitors around the world every month (comScore, October 2011), making
Wikipedia the fifth most-popular web site in the world.
“This grant is an important endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation and its
work, and I hope it will send a signal as we kick off our annual
fundraising campaign this week," said Sue Gardner, executive director of
the Wikimedia Foundation. "This is how Wikipedia works: people use it, they
like it, and so they help pay for it, to keep it freely available for
themselves and for everyone around the world. I am very grateful to Sergey
Brin and Anne Wojcicki for supporting what we do.”
The Brin Wojcicki Foundation has funded such organizations as the Michael
J. Fox Foundation, which is researching a cure for Parkinson’s disease. The
principals of the Brin Wojcicki Foundation are Sergey Brin, who co-founded
Google in 1997, and Anne Wojcicki, who co-founded 23andMe, a personal
genetics company.
*About the Wikimedia Foundation*
http://wikimediafoundation.org
http://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 477 million unique visitors per month, making them the
fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, October 2011).
Available in more than 280 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 20
million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than
100,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia
Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily
through donations and grants.
Media Contact:
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel. +1 415 839 6885 x 6609
jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
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