[Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite

[Sebastian Moleski]

Hi Samuel,

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Samuel J Klein <sj at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> One can always keep increasing operational spending.  Reserves or
> long-term funds should grow in tandem with those increases --
> otherwise as we come to rely on this new spending, there is additional
> risk that efforts may collapse if funding dries up.   Example: the
> coming year's Annual Plan includes a 50% drop in our effective reserve
> -- the reserve is staying the same while the annual budget doubles.
>

My point was that working on an endowment at the current situation isn't a
very sensible thing to do. An endowment isn't a reserve, though, so I'm not
sure where the two are related here. The former is a means to generate
revenue, the later a means to handle revenue shortfalls.

It makes sense of course to have your reserves grow with your spending.
Neither I nor anyone else was advocating something different.


> Regardless of what we do with reserves and long-term funds, keeping
> the projects online forever was the premise of the last fundraiser.
> We have an immediate obligation to make progress towards that goal.  A
> new datacenter will help, but I'd like to see specific long-term
> forecasts and plans published.


Isn't the strategy project providing just that?

Best regards,

Sebastian Moleski
President
Wikimedia Deutschland