[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[MZMcBride]

Samuel Klein wrote:
>Yes, let us build an endowment.
>It makes practical sense: As a community institution that aims to
>serve our society for the next 100 years, it matches our scope and
>vision.  And as a respected and visible global project, we can raise
>the funds we need.

phoebe ayers wrote:
>All that said, I strongly support the idea, on the principle that what we
>do is important for the long-term and needs to be supported as such. We
>did discuss the idea during my time on the board, a year or so ago, and it
>sounds like it's coming up again, which is great!

Hi SJ and Phoebe.

What do you think about this as a path forward?

The Board votes on a resolution that would create an investigative
committee (a Sustainability Committee or an Endowment Committee or
whatever) that would take six months or a year or more to examine the
questions put forward by Stu (now available here:
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment/Questions>)? The purpose of the
committee would be to report back to the Board with solid answers to these
questions (and additional questions, of course) about a possible endowment.

The investigative committee could consist of some Wikimedia Foundation
staff, some Advisory Board members, some community members, some outside
financial and/or legal people, et al.

I think very broadly there's likely support for the creation of an
endowment, but I don't think there's enough solid information yet.

Is this a reasonable (or tenable) path forward? After having seen the
volume of past discussion about this idea, I'd really prefer not to look
back at this mailing list discussion in two or three years and still not
have made forward real forward progress. ;-)  If you have other ideas
about next steps here, please share!

MZMcBride