[Foundation-l] Great news! Google gives Wikimedia USD 2 million

[Renata St]

Yes, congrats! Awesome work!

I read that this morning on my phone in the news summary for the day during
the subway ride to work.

Renata

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of
> USD 2 million.  It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides
> Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and
> it is completely unrestricted.
>
> We'll be putting out a press release tomorrow, but I wanted to tell
> you beforehand.  This is really great news.  It's important to us
> financially, of course, but I see it as equally important from a
> symbolic perspective.  I believe that Wikimedia and Google are natural
> allies and partners --- we both want to help provide people everywhere
> around the world with information.  It seems natural to me that Google
> would want to support Wikimedia's work, and I am happy they are doing
> it.
>
> You probably know that Google and Wikimedia -–both editors and
> Wikimedia Foundation staff-- have, from time to time, collaborated on
> projects together.  (For example, the Google team has created
> functionality inside the Google Translate Toolkit that enables editing
> and uploading of translated articles to Wikipedia.)  This grant will
> not be channeled specifically towards Google-related activities: it
> will go into our general operating revenues. Having said that, I look
> forward to Google and Wikimedia continuing to do good work together.
>
> The press release is below.  It will go out tomorrow morning , but you
> don't need to keep this news confidential.  Feel free to tell your
> friends :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Sue Gardner
>
>
>
>
> Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google
> Donation will support capacity investments in Wikipedia and other free
> knowledge projects
>
> EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:00AM PST, February 17 2009
>
> SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2009 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the
> non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has
> received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable
> Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. This is the Wikimedia Foundation's
> first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs
> of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical
> infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and
> capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the
> organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more
> accessible.
>
> "Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered
> Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of
> community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is
> online."
>
> Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member, Jimmy Wales,
> also commented on the Google gift. "We are very pleased and grateful.
> This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the
> long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia. Both
> organizations are committed to bringing high quality information to
> hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the
> Internet better for everyone."
>
> The two organizations have a long-standing working relationship. Most
> recently, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have partnered to
> support translation of Wikipedia content into key languages with
> relatively small Wikipedia editions. Google's Translation Toolkit
> supports direct online translation of Wikipedia articles, and has been
> used by Google in Wikipedia translation pilot projects with speakers
> of Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.
>
> Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, offered:
> "It is wonderful that Google has stepped forward as a major supporter
> of a global, non-profit information commons. With this generous grant,
> we will be able to fund additional operations and development work to
> increase access and contributions to our free knowledge projects
> globally."
>
> Wikimedia's support comes primarily from individual donations made by
> regular users of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation completed its
> 2009-10 fundraiser in January. During the drive, 240,000 individuals
> donated more than $8 million, representing three quarters of its
> planned revenue for the fiscal year.
>
> --
> Sue Gardner
> Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> 415 839 6885 office
> 415 816 9967 cell
>
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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