User:Dank/Foundation

The video of the question-and-answer session of the Wikimedia Foundation's board at Wikimania 2011 has some surprising news about money. The good stuff is between the 44:00 and 56:00 marks; here are some quotes. The things that jump out at me are "growing by a factor of 5 or 10 this year" and "$30 million dollars":


 * Jimmy Wales: I think that we should see a lot of innovative projects coming from a lot of innovative people that aren't necessarily within the Foundation's organizational structure, simply because one organization can only do a certain number of things really well, particularly a small organization. ... I wouldn't be supportive of an idea that the Foundation should start 20 new projects next year. Instead, I'd like to see 20 new projects or 100 new projects start somewhere, and for us to find ways to help them and support them.


 * SJ Klein: We've certainly seen some of the most exciting new work happen through groups of people who were getting together online that weren't necessarily tied into Wikipedia that closely ... But for the most part, that work has been delegated to chapters. Many of the grants that people apply for now [from the Foundation or from] individual chapters have been to organize events like GLAM projects; I'd say that's by far the largest category of fund work. Barry [Newstead]'s team and most of the grant application process, which we're planning on growing by a factor of 5 or 10 this year, is devoted to making those things happen.


 * Stu West: In the last five years, as a community, we've come into a lot of money. Five years ago, I think our fundraiser raised $1.5M.  Last year, in total between chapters and the Foundation, we raised almost $30M. ... Whatever money we as a movement have should flow to those parts that can best use it ... [We want to] protect the decentralization ... At the same time, we operate in a regulatory environment, and there are all sorts of rules and laws that apply ... whether it's a company or ... 501(c)(3) [i.e., tax-exempt nonprofit US corporation].


 * Bishakha Datta: The key is accountability: programmatically, financially and in other ways.

The Foundation is in the enviable position that their donors are expecting the creation of free content ... apparently the Foundation is saying they can be accountable to that goal by donating money to other nonprofits to create free content (and if some version of that content gets used in Wikipedia, everyone wins.)