[Foundation-l] 2008/2009 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report

[Jay Walsh]

Hi all,

In the next day or so Rand and the fundraising team will be sending out an email to all of our donors (about 230,000 - thanks to a tremendous fundraiser) recapping the campaign sharing our 2nd annual report, which you can also read here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report

As with our previous year's report, we make an effort to describe the year's activities, our major accomplishments, our financial successes, and where we're heading in the coming year/years.  This is a crucial tool for our fundraisers and for building strong relationships with our major stakeholders, and of course to let our chapters and our vast community of volunteers get a snapshot of our work.  It's primarily intended to work as a print document, and one that quickly presents top-line data and key information, as well as a basic structured narrative about the Foundation and our volunteer community's work.

You'll note that our report is out later than last year, and this isn't a pattern we'll duplicate :)  We did spend more time on design and narrative this year, with the intention of bringing more depth to the story, especially in features like the center-spread anatomy of an article.  We also wanted to put more of a forward-facing direction on the report. Optimally our report will always come out 2-3 months after the close of fiscal, as soon as our audited statements are complete.  

There's still more good work to be done, but it's a big leap from last year. This year's designers David Peters and Rhonda Rubenstein did a great job (collectively known as 'ExBrook design' here in SF http://www.exbrook.com/).  Lane Hartwell's ccbysa photos feature prominently - she's been shooting our staff portraits for the last two years (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photography_by_Lane_Hartwell).

We'll be starting work on the next edition in a few months.  About 1500 copies will be printed here in the next week or so.  We'll be sure to bring copies to the chapter meeting and of course Wikimania.  We can ship some copies out as well if there's interest (but in limited quantities only, it's a pricy shipment after 10 locations :)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! 

-- 
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
blog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw