[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: Davos

Sue Gardner sgardner at wikimedia.org
Tue Feb 17 18:39:23 UTC 2009


Report to the Board: Davos
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director
Prepared for: Wikimedia Board of Trustees
Date: February 3, 2009

Background & Context

Every year, Jimmy is invited to Davos in his individual capacity as a
Young Global Leader, and the Wikimedia Foundation receives one
invitation to participate in the category of Technology Pioneer.  Last
year, Florence represented us: this year, Michael delegated
participation to me so that I could explore Davos from a fundraising
perspective.  As always, Jimmy paid his own costs, and the Foundation
paid mine.

The main goals of the trip were to 1) present a funding proposal to a
potential funder we've been speaking with, 2) increase awareness of
Wikipedia as a charity among attendees (e.g., media, prospective
donors, NGOs, etc.), and 3) actively move forward relationships with a
few key major donor prospects.  I was also able to meet briefly with
some of the board members of the Swiss chapter, in Zurich.

Summary

>From January 27 to February 1, Jimmy and I attended the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In general, I would say the trip was fairly useful.  From a
fundraising perspective, Davos is not good for direct solicitation,
but it does help with prospect cultivation, stewardship and
relationship-building. It also helps us build general awareness of
Wikimedia as a serious-minded non-profit organization.  And because
the WEF waives the entry fee for us, attendance is quite cheap: the
major cost to Wikimedia is my time.

In general, I am comfortable with us continuing to attend Davos,
particularly in years during which we're actively cultivating one or
more attendees.   Additionally, I think we should try to get invited
to other conferences that will give us access to potential funders and
help establish us as a serious international non-profit.

Experiences and Observations

Davos is a great way to connect with a large number of people in a
short period of time. I had dozens of good conversations with past and
current funders as well as prospects and friends.   There was lots of
general good will and appreciation for our work.

During Davos, I attended a dozen seminars and talks on topics ranging
from the future of media, to leveraging mass innovation, to sustaining
the nonprofit sector in a downturn, to digital Asia.  I was a panelist
in the session "Youth Culture: A Heat Map."  I attended a variety of
dinners and parties, including a UN Millennium Development Goals
dinner for women hosted by Wendi Murdoch and Indra Nooyi, which had as
speakers Melinda Gates and Sarah Brown.

In general, I found Davos wasn't great for direct solicitation: every
room is noisy and crowded, and it's hard to have an uninterrupted
conversation.  Over the course of the conference, I experimented by
directly soliciting six random people – tablemates at dinner, etc.
The responses were neutral-to-warm, but I didn't get anything
encouraging enough to warrant follow-up.

There were some very interesting philanthropy/NGO-related panels and
interviews, with some particularly interesting comments from people
like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. The effects of the economic downturn
on the non-profit sector was very much on people's minds, obviously,
and there was useful discussion about it.

I met with Soumitra Dutta from INSEAD, faculty director of
elab at INSEAD, INSEAD's "center of excellence in teaching and research
in the digital economy," and co-author with Matthew Fraser of Throwing
Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform
Your Life, Work and World.  He's interested in Wikipedia and
Wikimedia, I believe particularly from an organizational behaviour
standpoint, and we're exploring whether a partnership of some kind
would make sense (e.g., a case study or research project).

Interestingly, a number of people complained to me about their
articles being overly negative.  Obviously Jimmy gets this all the
time, but I was surprised how often it was the first thing a person
would say to me. All my conversations about Wikipedia were warm and
friendly and positive, with the exception of people's pain/anger about
BLP issues.

A side note, but on the way back from Davos I was happy to be able to
meet in Zurich with three people from the board of the Swiss chapter:
Michael Bimmler, Rupert Thurner and Robin Schwab. We had a useful
conversation about (among other things) chapters development and
scope, strategy development, and the new Wikimedia Foundation chapters
funding requests process. It was particularly great to finally meet
face-to-face with Michael :-)

Analysis

Fundraising: Davos seems fairly useful for 1) relationship maintenance
with current donors, and 2) relationship building with prospective
donors - particularly with regards to donors and prospects who live
outside the United States.  I believe Davos is good at helping us
develop closer relationships with people we already are connected to,
but it is not suited to direct solicitation of cold prospects.

Awareness/Branding: I believe Davos is good for helping shape general
perception of Wikimedia among attendees – a group which includes
journalists, philanthropists, and Silicon Valley tech people.  It
helps 1) create greater awareness that we're a charity, and 2) support
the perception of us as serious-minded, sane and responsible.  This
might have a small continued ripple effect post-Davos when attendees
talk to other people.

Business development/Partnerships: If we were a start-up wanting to
aggressively initiate deals, Davos's broad exposure to potential
partners would be terrific.  But we have no trouble getting people to
return our calls, and 99% of the ideas pitched to us we do not want to
move forward.  So I am not convinced that, from a biz dev perspective,
Davos is useful to us.

Conclusion

During the coming year, we'll continue to evolve and finetune our
thinking about fundraising, and particularly major donor / foundation
cultivation.  By the next Davos, we'll be in a good position to know
whether attendance continues to make sense for us, and if so, who's
best to go.  For the time being, I am comfortable with us making the
assumption that we'll continue to participate, particularly if we're
actively cultivating one or more other attendees.




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