2009/8/11 Thomas Dalton <[email protected]>: > 2009/8/11 Sue Gardner <[email protected]>: >> FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS >> >> During April, the Wikimedia Foundation received 922 donations, with a >> combined total value of USD 78,453. Year-to-date, the Wikimedia >> Foundation has raised USD 5,491415 in donations from individuals, 37% >> above the full-year target of USD 4,000,000. > > As always, thanks for these reports. I'm curious - 37% is a lot of > extra money, is there a plan for how to spend it? Has this year's > spending been increased or will the extra just be carried over to next > year or just kept as reserves?
As always, you are hugely welcome -- it's my pleasure :-) I will ask Veronique to reply a little more fully, but here's the gist: 1) That paragraph of the report doesn't cover our full financial picture -- total revenues weren't up 37%, just individual donations as a subset of total revenues. So, there was not a USD 1.49 million "surplus" -- it was less than that, because other areas under-performed against plan in the same period. Also bear in mind that spending varied relative to plan, as well. 2) #1 notwithstanding, we are indeed thinking about what to do with money unspent in a given year. In general, I do not want the Wikimedia Foundation to accumulate massive reserves -- generally, because donors give money in hopes it will be spent usefully. But at the same time, it would be imprudent to have no financial cushion at all. This is one of the issues Veronique and I think about quite a bit, and I know she is hoping that the strategy project will work on it too. How much reserve is enough, when is it time to build towards an endowment. I'll ask Veronique to comment further :-) Thanks, Sue _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
