[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: December 2008

[Sue Gardner]

2009/3/11 Mark (Markie) <newsmarkie at googlemail.com>:
> <snip>
>>
>> We also
>> received major gifts totaling USD 94m.
>>
> </snip>
>
> :O is this a typo or is it actually correct? Also if its possible could we
> have slightly more info about who the donations were from and whether they
> were targeted/restricted to any use?


Erik is a faster typist than me, LOL.

He is faster, but I provide more information :-)

* Major donations are all listed here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors  You can see on the
page that we've received large gifts from, for example, Mitch Kapor
and from Graphics Press (Edward Tufte!).

* Donors are assumed to want to be anonymous unless they say
otherwise. Frankly, I am totally comfortable with them remaining
anonymous.  Basically - anything as well-known as Wikipedia is
guaranteed to attract its share of cranks and critics, and upon
occasion our donors have told us they've been hassled a little.  (I
use the word hassled loosely: nothing frightening or serious has
happened.)  So I am comfortable with them remaining anonymous if they
like, and certainly it's their choice to make.

* You can assume --and should assume-- that if I don't specify
otherwise, a donation is unrestricted.  We prefer unrestricted
donations, and most donations are unrestricted. We rarely accept
restricted donations of less than USD 250K, because we just don't have
the internal capacity to execute on a lot of small initiatives.  So,
we probably only receive a restricted donation every couple of months,
and when we do, we'll tell you about it.

Hope that helps - thanks Mark,
Sue