[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Mathieu Stumpf]

Le 2013-03-14 12:12, Andrew Gray a écrit :
> On 14 March 2013 08:09, Manuel Schneider 
> <manuel.schneider at wikimedia.ch> wrote:
>
>> thanks for collecting these links, they are interesting. Anyway, I
>> didn't fully understand the idea behind the page, especially as a
>> non-native speaker I have problems to come up with a proper 
>> translation
>> / understanding of "Endowment". I understand it as "what WM(F) owns" 
>> and
>> it may refer to the "right" WM(F) expects to have on getting / using
>> their donated money or may refer to the reserves WMF is currently 
>> building.
>>
>> Can you explain this a bit better for people like me, please? Maybe
>> right on that Meta page would be good, so others can read it as 
>> well.
>
> Hi Manuel,
>
> The basic idea of an endowment is that it's a large sum of money
> collected to "set up" a charity - it then uses the income from
> investing this money to cover some or all of its operating costs,
> rather than just spending it over a long period of time. The Wellcome
> Trust is a pretty good high-profile example; it has a capital
> endowment of around fifteen billion pounds, and spends about six
> hundred million (4%) a year.
>
> (In the US context, they're very common for universities, but this is
> less so in Europe; here it's more "traditional charities")
>
> I've given a quick outline on the meta page. Building up an endowment
> sufficient to run WMF would be tricky, of course :-)

Let's hope it won't turn up into a "charity business" like the Gates 
Foundation whose investisements are benefits driven, with no 
consideration to ethical problems.

-- 
Association Culture-Libre
http://www.culture-libre.org/