Gerard,
On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 5:39 PM, you wrote:
Arguably we do not spend enough, we could achieve more.
I would say that it is about spending money differently, not just more. However, here are some things that one could achieve for a modest $2.5M, as suggested in a thread on this list in January – considering the enormous surplus value accruing to the Foundation as a result of the work of the Community, any or all of these suggestions seem to be to be quite modest returns to the Community for that work.
"Rogol"
1. Fully-paid bursaies to Wikimania 2017 for one person from each of the 250 largest projects; 2. Purchase one reference book or similar for the 30,000 most active content contributors; 3. Purchase a one-year JSTOR subscription for the 10,000 most active content contributors; 4. Local travel bursaries to Wikimedia meetups and conferences for 50,000 members of the Community; 5. An office with ten staff paid for a year to resolve the requirements for improved tools from the Community Tech programme.
One could imagine folding some of these into the endowment at 4% as follows: 1'. Funding for 10 Wikimania bursaries per year for ever; 2'. Funding for 1,000 books per year for ever; 3'. Funding for 400 JSTOR subscriptions per year for ever; 4'. Funding for local travel for 2,000 people per year for ever.