[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Lisa Gruwell]

We also have to consider what these costs will be in 5 years and beyond to
know really how big an endowment would need to be.  This will require some
fairly complicated projects, that will most certainly be wrong at some
point in time.  :)

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:16 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 8:45 PM, George Herbert
> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> [Hosting...] Then various operational and administrative costs. My
> finger in the
> >> air estimate would be a total of about $4m-$5m.
> >>
> >> It is important to know how much money is going on essentials and how
> much
> >> on nice-to-haves. (That ought to be how the core/non-core split works,
> really)
>
> I think a useful breakdown is
> {([<hosting> + core operations] + core projects) + additional
> projects} = budget
>
> The boundaries get fuzzier, moving out.
>  Hosting :    Bandwidth and hardware; has two line-items in the budget.
>  Core ops :  Everything needed to make hosting work with [reasonable]
> uptime / disaster response / critical updates.
>  Core projects :  Everything needed to make the Projects and
> Foundation work with [reasonable] efficiency and accessibility.
> Including fundraising, financial and legal project support,
> development of major features, mediawiki platform innovation, support
> for community tech innovation.
>  Additional projects A :  Efforts to upgrade "reasonable" service to
> "excellent".  Support for new Projects. Experiments in engagement /
> collaboration / governance.
>  Additional projects B :  Work to bridge gaps in current projects,
> research to find solutions to unsolved problems, outreach to new
> audiences.  Other exploratory work, e.g., in design / communication /
> education / dissemination / translation.
>
> There are other ways we could classify our work.  There are options
> for in-kind donations or volunteer-run versions of many costs, though
> this is not always sustainable.  There are options for degrading the
> quality of services rather than dropping them entirely.
>
> This classification isn't perfectly tied to long-term importance: it
> focuses on things we've already done and want to protect.  Something
> supported by an "additional" project today may become a core project
> tomorrow, or key to the future of the movement... or it may be spun
> off or handed off to a partner.
>
> Last year, our definition of "non-core" WMF projects was I believe
> similar to group "B" above.
>
> SJ
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>