[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[James Salsman]

Rupert Thurner wrote:
>...
> why should somebody who earns a little salary want to give 10
> dollars to a foundation which has 40 million on its bank account?

Donors are on average much more well off than editors: 88% of them
have a college degree, more than three quarters work in skilled
professions, their worldwide median income is about USD $75,000, and
more than 5% make over $200,000 per year. And they depend on
Wikipedia: 89% of donors visit several times per week and 40% visit at
least once a day.

But more importantly, all of their email addresses are on file.
There's no point using staff and Board time to cogitate about
endowment strategies when it would take a few hours at most to email a
survey to randomly selected donors asking them what *they* think about
it. (And Leslie's champagne bonus/market pay fund to keep Facebook
etc. from hiring her away, for that matter, but I digress.) Do donors
think Wikipedia will last as long as brick-and-mortar universities?
There is only one way to find out. The value proposition of an
endowment is easy: We're fundraising not just to support current
operations, but to buy enough investment grade bonds so that current
operations can be supported without needing donations in the future.