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

[Philippe Beaudette]

Fantastic!!

Philippe

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Sue Gardner" <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 12:20 PM
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Sloan awards Wikimedia USD 1mannually 
for three years

> 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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