[Foundation-l] [Announcement] Sloan awards Wikimedia USD 1m annually for three years

[Brian]

That is so awesome. Nice work Erik!

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I'm delighted to tell you that yesterday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
> board of directors voted to award the Wikimedia Foundation USD 1 million
> annually for the coming three years. A total of USD 3 million, spread over
> three years.
>
> This is what Sloan characterizes as "institutional funding" - meaning, a
> form of grant designed to help us work towards our general goals – in our
> case, financial and operational sustainability, increasing quality,
> increasing and broadening participation, and distributing our material
> beyond the wiki environment. As you know, we've recently expanded the staff
> from 10 to 15, and we still have a few more positions to fill: this funding
> will offset those increased costs.
>
> This is _fabulous_ news. Sloan is high-profile and widely-respected: this
> donation is financially significant for us, and it also signals that Sloan
> sees our work as important and our organization as trustworthy.
>
> I'd like to take a moment to thank Erik Moeller, who developed our first
> contact with Sloan through his work representing Wikimedia on the
> Encyclopedia of Life's institutional council. (Sloan is an EOL funder.)
>  Based on that initial relationship, in January Sloan invited Erik to
> present to them about Wikimedia, after which they asked us for a formal
> request for funding. Without Erik, this would not have happened. Yay, Erik
> :-)
>
> We will be sending out a press release in a few hours, and I will also
> send this note to foundation-l soon. Meanwhile, please join the staff and
> board of the Wikimedia Foundation in celebrating this terrific news!
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>
>
> --
>
> Sue Gardner
> Executive Director,
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
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