Hi,
Are there any activities that could have a meaningful impact if we ask donors for such amount of seed money? Are there reasons to do so?
In many areas we lack good secondary sources. Some times we don't even have any secondary sources. I did some work at the National Manufacture of Ceramics of Sèvres in France[1]. They have knowledge there that is not in any book. It is transmitted directly from master to student...
My idea would be to create a publishing company that would hire specialists to write monographs on subjects where we lack good secondary sources. The compagny would regularly ask the wikimedians about which subjects they need sources.
Those works would be published under a Free Licence but independantly from the Wikipedias so there would be no risk for the Wikimedia Foundation to be seen as doing paid editing. Wikipedians would then be free to use those sources to improve the Wikipedias.
Regards.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacture_nationale_de_S%C3%A8vres