Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Le 2013-03-18 13:01, Fae a écrit : I suggest you step away from the technology component before this becomes a mantra. Given a span of 100 years, assumptions become rather large. We can start to assume that within one or two decades, *everyone* on the planet is data-connected, we can assume that language barriers break down or become irrelevant, we can assume that connection and hardware costs become vanishingly small and we can assume that engagement with human knowledge is fully immersive. Your assumptions seems really big to me. I won't discuss the *everyone* on the planet is data-connected, I hope you are right, but to my mind it sounds like a very optimistic point of view. This depend a lot on the global economic developpement, as well as mankind ability to find a way to sustain such a huge energy requirement: electronic devices for everyone imply electricity for everyone (hopefuly clean produced/stored/delivered). Now language barriers break down or become irrelevant. That statement is so big that I am wondering wether I am misintrepreting an ironic statement as a serious one or not. After all I am not an english native speaker, so excuse me if you were ironic, but otherwise this is just a real case example of how huge the language barriers are. They are many challenges on the language barriers. And to my mind we, as wikimedia contributors, can play an important role in this challenges. We know that many language are disapearing right now, impoverish human culture. Unfortunately I discovered that even on this present list some people were using metric like how many scientific papers where published in this language last year to evaluate wether it was an important language or something which we may let completely disapear (sum of all human knowledge?). So not only there is work to preserve language (and culture) diversity, but there's even work to do to convince people that it's important in the first place (for scientific-centric mind, think about what you need to realize works in anthropology and history, for example). An other thing in which we will, to my mind, be really helpful, will be the wikiomega/wiktionnaries integration into wikidata. This will enable to see which concepts are covered into which languages, and possibly help to build equivalent neologisms with respect to the equivalent etymological path/construction in the target language. Moreover this could help build new languages, possibly yet another attempt for an international language. Not that I would be enthusiast with such a project, I'm fine with learning esperanto which as far as I know is the current most successful project in this category. Now, many linguistic critics (and also non-linguistic ones, not relevant here) where published on esperanto, so maybe some linguists may come with something better and that they could be helped with a the semantic cartography wikidata could become. It doesn't look like UNO and other international organsiation are realy interested to give ressources to build and promote an international language, so may be __we__ could do it. Developing a strategy would require some big thinking of scenarios: * Does Wikimedia get subsumed into a new ecology of open knowledge organizations? * Does operations become irrelevant as it will be naturally factored out? * In a future of cheap as chips access, does access mean socialization and education? Classically, one might bounce around environmental scenarios such as religious division, hyper-connection social instability (meme threats), population crisis etc. It's a big talk, and above was mentioned spending 5 years on this. Consider how darn slow us unpaid Wikimedia volunteers are to nit-pick our way forward, thinking of how we take longer than a year+ to reach some conclusions is not unreasonable, and it is not as easy as saying quote examples as if this was a discussion short-cut. Are refering to something like Basic income guarantee ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
SJ: I have been asked by the Audit Committee to do a report on the Endowment Issue and present the report at their next meeting, which will take place in this summer. Regards, Garfield On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 12:53 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Nathan wrote: To return to the endowment again as the main topic, I think there are some risks we need to consider in an endowment. In general I think having an endowment is a good idea for a charitable institution, Yes and yes. I suggested quite recently that the Board pass a resolution creating a committee to examine the points you raise and additional questions outlined here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment/Questions. I continue to think that we (as a community) are still not at a place where we can make good judgments about whether to set up an endowment. There simply isn't enough information available to make a sound decision, in my opinion. That said, the idea of creating an endowment does seem like an idea that has broad support for further consideration and exploration, which is why I think an investigative or exploratory committee would make a lot of sense here and now. Thoughts? More information is certainly needed. It is bound up in other strategic thinking, as others have noted. I think we should set up a strategy committee, with a subgroup focused on an endowment and long-term investment options. SJ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Hello dear all, at first thank you very much MZ for put this together. This is a quite hot topic both for the board election, which is coming soon again, and also on the board. The following is my personal opinion why WMF should not build an endowment. The rationale from me are the following three: 1. WMF doesn't need an endowment 2. An endowment poses extra risks and problems for the WMF 3. From some aspect an endowment is contraproductive for the WMF even if we ignore the risks. Let me explain in more detail: 1. WMF does not need an endowment. For most NGO and non-profit organizations, an endowment is a method to mitigate the risk of unconstant income and unsecure funding. With the endowment the organization is indepenmdant on the ever changing fundraising result or on its dependance on grants. The WMF is not facing these problems. The WMF is not dependant on one or few grants, and it is not dependant on some big donations. The fundraising model of the WMF is based on microgrants from hundreds of thousands of participants, and practically from every region of the world. This makes it less vulnerable for example on changing economic situations. This is especially the case since we are not exhausting our fundraising potential (and as I understand the current strategy, we are not planning to exhaust this potential), and we have a fairly good strategic reserve. For the year 2009 for example we were all a bit nervous on our fundraising result since at that time the financial crises began to seriously impack the world economy. But at that year we doubled our fund raising result, achieved our goal before the targetted fund raising deadline. This trend kept for the last few years, independant of the world economy. It proves the robustness of this fundraising model. In comparison to most other non-profit organizations we are in a lucky situation that this model works for us. It certainly does not work for all organizations. And because the model is robust and it works well for us, we should not simply do what everyone else does: try to build up an endowment. If we don't need it, we don't need it. 2. An endowment poses extra risks and problems for the WMF An endowment is a very big bunch of money. And if you have that money somewhere in your safe, it won't be any benefit. You need to invest it so that it get's return. An endowment is actually pretty similar like a bank. And as a bank, you need experts to take care of investment, of risk management, and all other things. Either you need your own experts (actually you always need your own expert at least for overseeing), or you need to buy experts. You need to trust him. Either way it means that you must pay the bill. And, the following is really my very personal and unprofessional opinion: There is no 100% security if you are a bank. Lheman Brothers were rated by all agencies as AAA until it went bancrupt. Even the United States Treasury Security is not as secure as it seemed to be. I trust the hundred thousand people who give us 10 to 100 dollars more than the few experts, when it comes to security. And the work ethic investment was already mentioned here in the list. I believe we can debate forever if investment in United States Treasury Security is ethic or not. 3. From some aspect an endowment is contraproductive for the WMF even if we ignore the risks I believe the Wikimedia projects represent a culture: the sharing culture. Even if it is not explicitely stated in our vision and mission, the Wikimedia projects are avant gards of this culture, and they get their strength from this culture. The annual fundraising campaign is one of our most effectful method to propagate this culture, even it is not designed so. I know many people, my colleagues, friends, people who use Wikipedia daily, but never think about how its service is maintained, until the annual fundraising campaign. Often it is at that time when people tell me: Oh, I just see you are fundraising again, I am happy to make this contribution to show my support. Normally people never say this, until at the end of the year when our fund raising banner is on our project pages. I know for a lot of you the banners are annoying. But I also know that for a lot of people, who are not so involved in our projects, the banner is the reminder of our sharing culture. It is the time when they feel that they need to contribute something, and it definitively make them happy to do so. It makes them to feel also to be part of it. Our annual fund raising campaign is not thought to be a propaganda for the sharing culture, but in effect it is a very effective propaganda for it. And I believe it would be a los for all of us, if we don't have it any more. So far, my thoughts. As I said all my private opinions, and some of them certainly very primitive and unprofessional. I am happy to get feedbacks and critics and learn from them. Greetings Ting
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
A couple of counterarguments for Ting: 1) (WMF does not need an endowment). The crux of this argument is that the WMF is not dependent on large grants, but from a widely spread grassroots campaign of small donations. While it is true that this has worked for us in the past, the WMF budget grows and gets bigger, and it is dangerous to rely solely on donations. A year of underperforming donations, poor fundraising, bad economy affecting users willingness to donate, etc., could be disastrous for the WMF. An endowment is a long-term security blanket to cover the WMF in situations when fundraising fails. Additionally, our fundraising model is not perfect. Zack can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the annual fundraising drive is disruptive to people's experiences and expectations. It serves as a reminder, but probably also serves to turn some people off to further engagement in Wikimedia. We've evolved from staring at Jimmy-face year after year, and our campaigns keep getting better, (thanks in no small part to work by Megan, Zack, Ryan, and the rest of that team) but it would be best if we didn't have to run them at all. So no, I dispute the premise that the WMF does not need an endowment. It's been well established that we can benefit from an endowment, and while there are certainly drawbacks, sticking the status quo is not really acceptable for this kind of innovative organization. 2) (Endowment poses extra risks and problems for WMF). Yes, endowments require money management. So does fundraising. Is it really so different for us to have a team dedicated to overseeing and growing an endowment, than for us to have a team that exists mostly to run tests on banners for fundraising every year? The comparison to banks is irrelevant. An endowment is not a bank, it is not regulated as a bank, and it answers to a different set of stakeholders than a bank does. The 2008 financial meltdown was a catastrophic failure of management, oversight, ethics, on many sides. Despite the AAA ratings from Moodys and other institutions, plenty of people saw it coming and gave the dire warnings. Actually, an endowment acts as a hedge against this sort of thing. Careful wealth management can limit the risk to the endowment from market shocks that fundraising cannot avoid. For instance, high unemployment will, broadly speaking, hurt fundraising which depends on disposable income. Endowments don't rely nearly as directly on end-consumers, their confidence, and their job/financial security. 3) (Endowment counterproductive to vision). I disagree with this point as well. The Wikimedia vision and culture is about getting information to people, about sharing, about freedom of knowledge. I wholly disagree that the fundraising campaign is an effective way to propogate this culture. In fact, it is antithetical to this culture. It is essentially an annual hostage-taking of the WMF projects until we get our money. It means that projects are not truly free -- they are not gratis because if enough people don't donate, they will disappear, and they are arguably not libre because they are under a constant existential threat. If we want more people to have access to Wikimedia projects which makes more sense -- removing the risk of shutdown by employing an endowment that will ensure the freedom of the projects in perpetuity; or to beg for money year after year, simply because it reminds people that we exist? Finally, it's a false dichotomy that we can't have both an endowment and do fundraising. The endowment itself can do its own fundraising as needed, which can serve the purpose of reminding people we exist, and continuing to grow from a personal, grassroots level (rather than by large grants). Frankly, without senior WMF staff buy-in, an endowment is dead in the water. Even if the community designed and implemented one on their own, it'd need support from all sorts of other entities (WMF legal, probably WCA, etc.). -Dan Dan Rosenthal On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Hello dear all, at first thank you very much MZ for put this together. This is a quite hot topic both for the board election, which is coming soon again, and also on the board. The following is my personal opinion why WMF should not build an endowment. The rationale from me are the following three: 1. WMF doesn't need an endowment 2. An endowment poses extra risks and problems for the WMF 3. From some aspect an endowment is contraproductive for the WMF even if we ignore the risks. Let me explain in more detail: 1. WMF does not need an endowment. For most NGO and non-profit organizations, an endowment is a method to mitigate the risk of unconstant income and unsecure funding. With the endowment the organization is indepenmdant on the ever changing fundraising result or on its dependance on grants. The WMF is not facing these problems. The WMF is not dependant on one or few grants, and it is not dependant
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Ting Chen skrev 2013-03-18 08:20: So far, my thoughts. As I said all my private opinions, and some of them certainly very primitive and unprofessional. I am happy to get feedbacks and critics and learn from them. I wonder if our thoughts on an endowment depends on our presupposition on what the purpose of an endowment would be. You seem to think of fund to ease uneven funding from year to year and if this would be the purpose I would agree to your concerns My thought is of a fund to be used in extreme situations, many many years ahead from now, if nightmare scenarios would occur in 30-60 years from now, to ensure the content of our projects will still be accessible for all free of charge. And in my perspective I am in no hurry getting it up, it could be part of our next 5 year strategic plan to get it going But I would like to see as MZ suggest, that we as son as possible look into the technicalities of an endowment so we have a common understanding what we mean when we discuss this further. Anders ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
hi Fae, I share your commitment to avoiding a bureaucratic monster. However, I have to practically point out, that in our case any vision and strategy of a long time horizon is a grave mistake. We can't predict technologies and Internet trends 10 years in the future, so even vision creation beyond this point is a dangerously blinding and binding exercise. Strategy creation and its time horizon have to be based on the stability of the environment. The only business I know of that relies on something close to 100 years of time horizon for strategy is forestry. We, on the other hand, are in the Internet business, and going beyond 5 years in terms of strategic plans, and beyond 10 years in terms of long-term powerful visions is more likely to lull us to sleep, rather than help. best, dariusz (pundit) On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: I enjoyed Ting's perception, he always seems to have a viewpoint reliably in the center of the Wikimedia movement. I previously pushed for a commitment to perpetuity, including a 100 year plan for basic backup. The operational side of our movement failed to either understand why this is important, or properly to respond to a relatively simple proposal for a better strategy. Should an endowment run the risk of establishing a century spanning immovable bureaucracy, then our shared open knowledge vision, must be far greater than the English Wikipedia, bigger than Wikipedia, span wider than any Wikimedia project. These projects have a natural lifespan of less than a decade, not generations. Until the movement is ready to lay out a serious vision and strategy that covers the next 100 years, we are not ready to justify asking donors for hundreds of millions of dollars to stick in a WMF managed investment account. This alone would create a potential for reputational risk so great, it could wipe out the Wikimedia brand, and our stake in the open knowledge movement, permanently. Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- __ dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak profesor zarządzania kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On 18 March 2013 09:03, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: hi Fae, I share your commitment to avoiding a bureaucratic monster. However, I have to practically point out, that in our case any vision and strategy of a long time horizon is a grave mistake. We can't predict technologies and Internet trends 10 years in the future, so even vision creation beyond this point is a dangerously blinding and binding exercise. Strategy creation and its time horizon have to be based on the stability of the environment. The only business I know of that relies on something close to 100 years of time horizon for strategy is forestry. We, on the other hand, are in the Internet business, and going beyond 5 years in terms of strategic plans, and beyond 10 years in terms of long-term powerful visions is more likely to lull us to sleep, rather than help. The sum of human knowledge is not about internet technology of the moment, or limited to the next 5 years. If the WMF and the leading figures in our movement cannot produce a vision or even a highest possible level strategy for 100 years, then the case for having a billion dollar endowment looks exceedingly weak and probably idle dreaming. There is no sensible case for an endowment fund that only imagines the next couple of years - that is in fact why we talk about reserve funds that cover that period and short term risks that might arise. If I am looking to leave a million dollars in my will to benefit human knowledge, I would want the comfort of knowing the organization that will use my money will exist *long* after my death, it will not repurpose funds in unexpected ways, or waste it on an empire building bureaucracy that has the natural priority of paying benefits to careerist senior management types involved in operations. Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: The sum of human knowledge is not about internet technology of the moment, or limited to the next 5 years. Absolutely! And this is a great vision. But adjusting strategy to this vision requires understanding current technologies. Thus, it is impossible to create anything meaningful strategically that far into the future. If the WMF and the leading figures in our movement cannot produce a vision or even a highest possible level strategy for 100 years, then the case for having a billion dollar endowment looks exceedingly weak and probably idle dreaming. I agree with you that a compelling vision is a different story - and you've just quoted it above. There is no sensible case for an endowment fund that only imagines the next couple of years - that is in fact why we talk about reserve funds that cover that period and short term risks that might arise. An endowment is a fund that basically is meant to secure the long term existence and to support what we do now - with an assumption that we'll adjust to the emerging technologies (a huge leap of faith, considering that even now we're pretty bad at keeping up with the pace of new ways of doing the web services). I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, I only emphasize the importance of not talking about strategic planning for 100 years. Call it a vision exercise and we're on the same page. If I am looking to leave a million dollars in my will to benefit human knowledge, I would want the comfort of knowing the organization that will use my money will exist *long* after my death, it will not repurpose funds in unexpected ways, or waste it on an empire building bureaucracy that has the natural priority of paying benefits to careerist senior management types involved in operations. Yup, totally agree, I think that the endowment should be clearly reserved for keeping knowledge free, but not necessarily for management at all. dj ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Dariusz Jemielniak, 18/03/2013 10:33: It is not about being a business or not - it is about basics of strategic planning. Comparisons for endowments undoubtedly should be made to non-business organizations, but the horizon for strategic planning is not determined as much by the profit/non-profit nature of our organization, but rather by the nature of the industry we're in. It just does not make much sense to create strategies and visions 100 years into the future in our case. I disagree. The horizon for strategic planning in the case of business is just making profit, so you can build dams or power plants with a 50 or 100 years timeframe in mind, sell them all ten years later to buy banks or other big factories in a new sector and start again (cf. creation of Enel as told by Paul Ginsborg). That's exactly the opposite of what donors want for an endowment, and the point you're missing in your last reply to his point: it's reasonable to be unable to produce a meaningful long-term strategic plan for the sort of activities and objectives that the WMF has, but not for Wikimedia in general. In fact in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Trust I defined the aim as *negation* (or rather, the complement) of the 5-years strategic plan; more on the page. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Dariusz Jemielniak, 18/03/2013 11:41: [...] are we seriously arguing whether in the practice of strategic planning for NGOs time horizon for STRATEGY (not vision) can be set for 100 years? If you don't know, nobody can; *you* brought this topic up. And I still don't see anything in your arguments supporting your theory that in our case any vision and strategy of a long time horizon is a grave mistake, except the claim that, probably, all the institutions with endowments are more similar to forestry business than to us. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On 18 March 2013 11:28, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: ... I honestly don't believe that anyone with some basic understanding of principles of organizational strategic planning would dispute that. However, I entirely agree with Fae that we need a powerful, long-term vision (and I believe that making all knowledge universally accessible is quite good in this respect, and also appealing to donors for endowment). As I have a MBA specializing in international strategy, hand in hand with a couple of decades as a consultant, I would count myself as having a basic understanding. ;-) In other words, I completely do not understand why you insist that in spite of a long term vision we also need a 100-year spanning strategy. But let's assume we do: could you give examples of goals, say for year 10, year 20, year 50?... I suggest you step away from the technology component before this becomes a mantra. Given a span of 100 years, assumptions become rather large. We can start to assume that within one or two decades, *everyone* on the planet is data-connected, we can assume that language barriers break down or become irrelevant, we can assume that connection and hardware costs become vanishingly small and we can assume that engagement with human knowledge is fully immersive. Developing a strategy would require some big thinking of scenarios: * Does Wikimedia get subsumed into a new ecology of open knowledge organizations? * Does operations become irrelevant as it will be naturally factored out? * In a future of cheap as chips access, does access mean socialization and education? Classically, one might bounce around environmental scenarios such as religious division, hyper-connection social instability (meme threats), population crisis etc. It's a big talk, and above was mentioned spending 5 years on this. Consider how darn slow us unpaid Wikimedia volunteers are to nit-pick our way forward, thinking of how we take longer than a year+ to reach some conclusions is not unreasonable, and it is not as easy as saying quote examples as if this was a discussion short-cut. Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: As I have a MBA specializing in international strategy, hand in hand with a couple of decades as a consultant, I would count myself as having a basic understanding. ;-) I'd assume it goes way beyond basics. Developing a strategy would require some big thinking of scenarios: * Does Wikimedia get subsumed into a new ecology of open knowledge organizations? * Does operations become irrelevant as it will be naturally factored out? * In a future of cheap as chips access, does access mean socialization and education? The thing is, this is guesswork, and also a dangerous one in the sense that we separate this discussion from our resources (for instance, we have text-based knowledge bases, are we sure these will be even relevant in half a century? no way to decide. In terms of access: again, a great leap of faith is made e.g. in terms of energy resources allowing for a sustainable development of networks. It is just possible to conceive a scenario in which we'll have to wind down bandwidth consumption, rather than all go into a realistic VR). A century-long time horizon makes telepathic data transfer perfectly viable. Same it goes with hardware to brain porting. With this perspective, universal connectivity to the net as we know it now is a very modest assumption. We know that technologies completely changing our field are behind the corner. Classically, one might bounce around environmental scenarios such as religious division, hyper-connection social instability (meme threats), population crisis etc. And so did e.g. Barber or Huntington, and failed in many of their predictions just several years after they were made. It's a big talk, and above was mentioned spending 5 years on this. Consider how darn slow us unpaid Wikimedia volunteers are to nit-pick our way forward, thinking of how we take longer than a year+ to reach some conclusions is not unreasonable, and it is not as easy as saying quote examples as if this was a discussion short-cut. As long as it is not really a strategy creation exercise, but rather an imagination stimulation and concept brainstorming, I think it is a great idea. But we should not mistake trying to look way too far beyond what we can see as great vision. It is guesswork. best, dj ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Fine, let's call it strategy. Off-the-record, can you name some other organizations, preferably more or less in our industry, which have strategies longer than 20 years? Other than that I think that your idea of discussing a dispersed archive is great and definitely worth covering, and beyond any doubt it is also a good reason to have an endowment for. best, dj On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: On 18 March 2013 12:14, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: ... As long as it is not really a strategy creation exercise, but rather an imagination stimulation and concept brainstorming, I think it is a great idea. But we should not mistake trying to look way too far beyond what we can see as great vision. It is guesswork. I'm happy to continue calling this part of strategy creation, while you call it speculation or guesswork. However I believe it is perfectly clear that if the movement has no 100 year plan, even in concept, and cannot set some top level goals to show our commitment to a century long view, then a public call to create a billion dollar endowment will quickly be shot down as banking money for the sake of job security. An easy-peasy goal is to ensure all project knowledge content is actively archived in a way that the commitment to preservation is meaningfully demonstrated. Pointing to a reasonably future-proofed but cost effective 100-year (multi-location) archive is one obvious way of explaining what an endowment is for. PS I have heard the archive question answered recently by a representative of the WMF on a radio interview as Oh, it's all over the internet, if we disappear it could always be re-created (or words to that effect) - I thought this a particularly naff answer for an organization with many millions in the bank to spend on operational risks. Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae -- __ dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak profesor zarządzania kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On 18 March 2013 13:24, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: Fine, let's call it strategy. Off-the-record, can you name some other organizations, preferably more or less in our industry, which have strategies longer than 20 years? Google it - some random reading: * 100 year project http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2199247/The-100-year-Starship-project-plans-transport-humans-solar-system.html * 100 year plan http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Industry/Unigen-pens-100-year-plan * 100 year plan http://www.cnv.org/server.aspx?c=3i=541 * 100 year scenario planning http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Technology-in-the-next-100-years-the-futurologists-view * How Google and Virgin wanted to be on Mars in 100 years http://www.google.com/virgle/plan_1.html :-D A business search might discover some more down to earth long term strategy examples. If this gets a bit more serious, I might spend a couple of hours in the British Library business center tracking some down. Cheers, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
To return to the endowment again as the main topic, I think there are some risks we need to consider in an endowment. In general I think having an endowment is a good idea for a charitable institution, and certainly the WMF needs a strategic reserve of some size to maintain operations in the event of a crisis. But a lot of thought has to go into the target size of that fund, the nature of its fundraising, how or whether it is used, and what role (and of what prominence) it plays in WM/WMF public relations. There's a risk that the presence of a large endowment, or even a campaign to raise funds for an endowment, could cannibalize or turn off some donors. While I agree with Dan that there is something undesirable in making each annual fundraiser a life or death event, and essentially threatening our userbase with the end of the projects if the fundraiser doesn't go well, it's also clearly true that this is at least effective in raising money. There would at a minimum be a need to recalibrate messaging if an endowment were established that could carry the WMF through several years. We should also consider how having an endowment might affect the democratic nature of the WMF. (And before someone says NOT#DEMOCRACY!! yes, I know). This is the flipside of making the organization dependent on the annual fundraiser. While it's subject to economic fluctuations, it also is held responsible for the value it provides to user. If at some point the WMF loses the confidence, interest or support of the greater community of readers, then the organization will suffer as a result. But as an endowment becomes larger, the influence of the community decreases and the independence of management increases. I'm not sure what the current target is for a reserve, but a good starting point and middle ground between an endowment and a reserve is to have a fairly robust target - say three years of operational funding with a complete cessation of fundraising. In anything but a nightmare scenario, that should give the WMF a solid cushion of at least 5 to 10 years in the event of a major disruption in income, but avoid some of the challenges of a larger endowment and related campaign. ~Nathan ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
thanks for these three examples. All relate to innovation breakthroughs (the main goal for strategy is achieving something completely technologically impossible, and not movement growth/sustenance). They are interesting though - let me know if you come up with something else :) For now I think we can mute this dispute, as it diverts from the endowment issue. best, dj On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote: On 18 March 2013 13:24, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl wrote: Fine, let's call it strategy. Off-the-record, can you name some other organizations, preferably more or less in our industry, which have strategies longer than 20 years? Google it - some random reading: * 100 year project http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2199247/The-100-year-Starship-project-plans-transport-humans-solar-system.html * 100 year plan http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Industry/Unigen-pens-100-year-plan * 100 year plan http://www.cnv.org/server.aspx?c=3i=541 * 100 year scenario planning http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Technology-in-the-next-100-years-the-futurologists-view * How Google and Virgin wanted to be on Mars in 100 years http://www.google.com/virgle/plan_1.html :-D A business search might discover some more down to earth long term strategy examples. If this gets a bit more serious, I might spend a couple of hours in the British Library business center tracking some down. Cheers, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae -- __ dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak profesor zarządzania kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Nathan hit on something that I was thinking about, while reading Darius and Nemo's comments. (some snipping below) We should also consider how having an endowment might affect the democratic nature of the WMF This is the flipside of making the organization dependent on the annual fundraiser. If at some point the WMF loses the confidence, interest or support of the greater community of readers, then the organization will suffer as a result. But as an endowment becomes larger, the influence of the community decreases and the independence of management increases. This is definitely a risk, and one that needs to be addressed. In our current state I think if we had an endowment magically appear today, the combination of board, staff, and community could be counted on to provide enough oversight that while there may be policy disputes, the vision and fundamental shape of the WMF are generally similar to what they are now. We could reasonably count on that to stay the same in the near future. But as that timeline grows further into the future, that assumption becomes more shaky, especially when you reach the point in time where the majority of staff/board/users have turned over from the present generation to the next; losing that institutional memory. We've seen how contentious questions involving the community's relationship with the WMF can be. If the endowment can be structured in such a way that it guarantees perpetual community oversight of the WMF's implementation of the movement's vision, this is a good thing. But if not, it risks the organization slowly drifting into something different, without the leverage of the fundraiser to bring it back. Dan Rosenthal On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 4:52 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 18 March 2013 13:39, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: Just having a backup is only 1/10th of the problem though, if that. If Wikimedia Commons, for example, where to disappear in a cloud of smoke overnight what would it take to turn one of those backups into a properly functioning replacement? Open knowledge data is only useful when it's accessible :) Yes, that's the precise thing I'm saying needs proper testing :-) My threat model here is if WMF vanishes one day, say it's hit by a meteor (including legal meteors). - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Nathan wrote: To return to the endowment again as the main topic, I think there are some risks we need to consider in an endowment. In general I think having an endowment is a good idea for a charitable institution, and certainly the WMF needs a strategic reserve of some size to maintain operations in the event of a crisis. But a lot of thought has to go into the target size of that fund, the nature of its fundraising, how or whether it is used, and what role (and of what prominence) it plays in WM/WMF public relations. [...] These are all good points. I suggested quite recently that the Board pass a resolution creating a committee to examine the points you raise and additional questions outlined here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment/Questions. I continue to think that we (as a community) are still not at a place where we can make good judgments about whether to set up an endowment. There simply isn't enough information available to make a sound decision, in my opinion. That said, the idea of creating an endowment does seem like an idea that has broad support for further consideration and exploration, which is why I think an investigative or exploratory committee would make a lot of sense here and now. Thoughts? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:53 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: I continue to think that we (as a community) are still not at a place where we can make good judgments about whether to set up an endowment. There simply isn't enough information available to make a sound decision, in my opinion. That said, the idea of creating an endowment does seem like an idea that has broad support for further consideration and exploration, which is why I think an investigative or exploratory committee would make a lot of sense here and now. Thoughts? I have seen some good criticisms, which I tend to disagree with but I think are very healthy to explore and discuss. I think that an exploratory committee is an excellent idea. I think that, regardless of what form it takes, preserving the data and its history and editability for future generations and the benefit of humankind writ large is a goal I think it would be good to get consensus around and then start some thinking / planning. If an Endowment helps that, then it's worth examining more closely. If it hurts that, then perhaps not. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
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 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Mar 14, 2013, at 10:57 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: Aside from that, it's only recently that Wikimedia sites have approached having the kind of redundancy and failover capabilities we've talked about needing for a long time. That's at least one example of something that can add pretty significant costs without having a material impact on traffic (except in emergencies, of course). This. The data in the various Wikis and ability for people to get to it and maintain it are a public trust. Before there was much Foundation or money, as internet public services are wont to do, a shoestring needed to suffice. It would not be responsible to go back to those days. It would actually be a betrayal of the trust and intent of those donations over the years. That is not to say that there is no way that technology or ops tools cannot eventually possibly shrink those costs. But we should be prepared to keep spending that much. George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Hi Michael On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: I'm not sure why you would use traffic ranking for financial analysis, even the envelope-and-napkin kind of analysis we're engaging in here. I'm pretty confident that just because Google has been sitting at #1 for some time, it doesn't mean that their core operational costs have remained flat over that period. I'm actually not using the traffic for financial analysis. I'm only using the trend in traffic to compare the hosting costs - I think it would be fair to assume that both are intrinsically linked. :) The analysis of 6M/ year wasn't based on traffic at all, it was from the annual budget and expenditure I saw in the reports, though that was an envelope-and-napkin kind of analysis, it wasn't entirely based on conjectures either. I also think its unfair to compare Wikipedia with google, but if you were to take a top 10 traffic website and separate their infrastructure and cap-ex, and look at annual operational costs especially with things like bandwidth cost, it would have to be comparable. (Maybe not for google but let's say for twitter or linked.in - comparable bandwidth usage *is* the reason they are in the same league.) Aside from that, it's only recently that Wikimedia sites have approached having the kind of redundancy and failover capabilities we've talked about needing for a long time. That's at least one example of something that can add pretty significant costs without having a material impact on traffic (except in emergencies, of course). I wouldn't know about the redundancies or those capabilities, it seems fairly the same. My location and perspective might have more to do with that but I just don't see the change as that dramatic. I wouldn't say there isn't any change, from a performance stand-point, it just seems incrementally better - outages still happen[1], there are occasionally things that break, and minor lag issues persist on the other side of the world. I'm grateful for the improvements but I wouldn't really know what changed under the surface. On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote: Aye, I know for example that our page views have more then doubled in the last 5 years (since 2008) and I believe grew even more dramatically in the years before that. They increased a lot, but I don't think they more than doubled, or even doubled[2]. The rise is pretty steady from Feb 09. Regards Theo [1]http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/operations/outage/ [2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2012_02_detailed.html#fragment-31 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:36 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote: Aye, I know for example that our page views have more then doubled in the last 5 years (since 2008) and I believe grew even more dramatically in the years before that. They increased a lot, but I don't think they more than doubled, or even doubled[2]. The rise is pretty steady from Feb 09. Regards Theo According to http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/ (which is, I believe, the official numbers from the logs and comscore) we went from 9.55B page views in July 2008 to 21.79B page views in Feb 2013. We also went from 242M uniques in January 2008 to 488M in 2013 (I believe comscore undercounts developing countries where less advertising is focused as well so that number is probably more dramatic). James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Thanks James. I guess I stand corrected. On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: I didn't say you used traffic ranking to support your own estimate, you used it to try and rebut the estimates provided by Erik and others. That's still a kind of analysis. I was just providing the figures I saw in context, I thought Erik was doing the same kind of analysis. ;) Anyway, I see your point. I get there is a whole lot missing from that picture. Regards Theo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Going back to the original discussion. Werespielchequer added a proposal to the page[1] that is worth looking at. A good way would be to start small and move the reserve WMF carries already and invest them, then start transferring the larger donations and soliciting for the fund to large benefactors. Even with a target of $100M this could be achieved between 5-10 years depending on how aggressively its pursued. A fund like this could easily be established as a charitable trust under WMF, which would then provide WMF with an annual donation. Donations directly to the trust would also be tax-deductible. I'm not sure what the US tax law is on capital gains tax for such trusts but something like this would have to be established with an indefinite target. The trust should be expected to exist in perpetuity, and grow with the requirements at the same time. Even in unforeseen cases, the primary goal of the trust should be to keep the projects online indefinitely, no 20-30 or even 100 year target - even if the projects aren't relevant, even if WMF no longer exists - A trust would ensure there always is a WMF or someone there to run the projects and carry on the goal. Regards Theo [1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment#Proposal On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 8:33 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: Liam Wyatt, 15/03/2013 02:55: On 15 March 2013 01:51, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: The what's the level required for bare survival question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity. Perhaps a more useful measure is to look at the differentiation in the WMF budget between what is considered core and what is approved by the FDC. I seriously doubt so. Let's not abuse measures and definitions for purposes other than those they were designed for, please. Nemo __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Mar 15, 2013 9:26 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: A good way would be to start small and move the reserve WMF carries already and invest them Absolutely not. The reserves are there to protect the foundation against sudden increases in costs or decreases in revenues. They are needed for that purpose. If we're going to have an endowment, we need to fundraise specifically for it. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Hi, Am 14.03.2013 06:48, schrieb MZMcBride: I've started collecting notes about a possible Wikimedia or Wikimedia Foundation endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment. thanks for collecting these links, they are interesting. Anyway, I didn't fully understand the idea behind the page, especially as a non-native speaker I have problems to come up with a proper translation / understanding of Endowment. I understand it as what WM(F) owns and it may refer to the right WM(F) expects to have on getting / using their donated money or may refer to the reserves WMF is currently building. Can you explain this a bit better for people like me, please? Maybe right on that Meta page would be good, so others can read it as well. Thank you, Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
See also: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:12 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.ukwrote: On 14 March 2013 08:09, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch wrote: thanks for collecting these links, they are interesting. Anyway, I didn't fully understand the idea behind the page, especially as a non-native speaker I have problems to come up with a proper translation / understanding of Endowment. I understand it as what WM(F) owns and it may refer to the right WM(F) expects to have on getting / using their donated money or may refer to the reserves WMF is currently building. Can you explain this a bit better for people like me, please? Maybe right on that Meta page would be good, so others can read it as well. Hi Manuel, The basic idea of an endowment is that it's a large sum of money collected to set up a charity - it then uses the income from investing this money to cover some or all of its operating costs, rather than just spending it over a long period of time. The Wellcome Trust is a pretty good high-profile example; it has a capital endowment of around fifteen billion pounds, and spends about six hundred million (4%) a year. (In the US context, they're very common for universities, but this is less so in Europe; here it's more traditional charities) I've given a quick outline on the meta page. Building up an endowment sufficient to run WMF would be tricky, of course :-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Thanks Andrew and Philippe for your explanation and links. So that is a plan to build a reserve of funds that is so big that the operation can be funded by the capital's gain - interest, dividends... Sounds interesting, even though the endowment must be huge to cover our yearly budgets. Another problem is that it is currently very hard to find an interesting investment with low risks. Interest rates have been reduced by the major central banks in order to overcome the global recession, many formerly safe and interesting investments became risky and those who are still safe partly have even negative interest rates (eg. german state bonds). /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On 14 March 2013 13:00, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch wrote: Thanks Andrew and Philippe for your explanation and links. So that is a plan to build a reserve of funds that is so big that the operation can be funded by the capital's gain - interest, dividends... Yes, although reserve generally refers to money kept in case something goes wrong. An endowment would be a separate fund specifically raised for that purpose. Sounds interesting, even though the endowment must be huge to cover our yearly budgets. Another problem is that it is currently very hard to find an interesting investment with low risks. Interest rates have been reduced by the major central banks in order to overcome the global recession, many formerly safe and interesting investments became risky and those who are still safe partly have even negative interest rates (eg. german state bonds). An endowment is a long-term thing. Current low interest rates probably won't last more than a few years. Even so, it would need to be a very large fund, yes. If you can get a return of, say, 2% over inflation (you can get more than that if you're willing to take some risks) you need 50 times your annual budget to fund it all from the endowment. That would be something like $2 billion for the WMF. It doesn't need to fund the entire budget to be useful, though, and can be built up over time (eg. from legacies in people's wills). ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Hi Manuel, In my professional experience with endowments (which isn't that extensive, I must confess), the investments are typically extremely conservative and designed to give a steady and reliable long term flow of dividends, rather than shooting for quick capital gains through risky investments in shares or property. Things like debentures, government bonds, fixed interest deposits, and so forth. Even in these current times of financial uncertainty, a competent investment adviser should be able to construct an investment portfolio that provides a modest return with little risk. Regards, Craig Franklin Message: 5 Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:21 +0100 From: Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment Message-ID: 5141bbd5.8050...@wikimedia.ch Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Thanks Andrew and Philippe for your explanation and links. So that is a plan to build a reserve of funds that is so big that the operation can be funded by the capital's gain - interest, dividends... Sounds interesting, even though the endowment must be huge to cover our yearly budgets. Another problem is that it is currently very hard to find an interesting investment with low risks. Interest rates have been reduced by the major central banks in order to overcome the global recession, many formerly safe and interesting investments became risky and those who are still safe partly have even negative interest rates (eg. german state bonds). /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Le 2013-03-14 12:12, Andrew Gray a écrit : On 14 March 2013 08:09, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch wrote: thanks for collecting these links, they are interesting. Anyway, I didn't fully understand the idea behind the page, especially as a non-native speaker I have problems to come up with a proper translation / understanding of Endowment. I understand it as what WM(F) owns and it may refer to the right WM(F) expects to have on getting / using their donated money or may refer to the reserves WMF is currently building. Can you explain this a bit better for people like me, please? Maybe right on that Meta page would be good, so others can read it as well. Hi Manuel, The basic idea of an endowment is that it's a large sum of money collected to set up a charity - it then uses the income from investing this money to cover some or all of its operating costs, rather than just spending it over a long period of time. The Wellcome Trust is a pretty good high-profile example; it has a capital endowment of around fifteen billion pounds, and spends about six hundred million (4%) a year. (In the US context, they're very common for universities, but this is less so in Europe; here it's more traditional charities) I've given a quick outline on the meta page. Building up an endowment sufficient to run WMF would be tricky, of course :-) Let's hope it won't turn up into a charity business like the Gates Foundation whose investisements are benefits driven, with no consideration to ethical problems. -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Thomas Dalton wrote: An endowment is a long-term thing. Current low interest rates probably won't last more than a few years. Even so, it would need to be a very large fund, yes. If you can get a return of, say, 2% over inflation (you can get more than that if you're willing to take some risks) you need 50 times your annual budget to fund it all from the endowment. That would be something like $2 billion for the WMF. It doesn't need to fund the entire budget to be useful, though, and can be built up over time (eg. from legacies in people's wills). Exactly. As I understand it, the yearly annual Wikimedia Foundation budget is about $35 million. It costs about $2.5 million to keep the sites operational for a year. So even if an endowment weren't large enough to cover well over 130 full-time staff members, it could still keep us up and running for a while. Assuming $2.5 million, that's about $125 million, using your multiply by 50 formula. That's still a shitload of money, but it's much less than $2 billion. :-) I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place to put their money, I think. The question then becomes: how do we decide on this? A community vote (similar to the licensing update vote) followed by a Board resolution? A Wikimedia-wide requests for comment? Just a Board resolution (assuming a majority of members support this, of course)? Thoughts on how to figure out what the next step here is would be really appreciated. (Particularly looking at you, Philippe, given your work on both the strategic plan and the licensing vote. Gerard's Law and all. ;-) MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:47 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: (Particularly looking at you, Philippe, given your work on both the strategic plan and the licensing vote. Gerard's Law and all. ;-) For the record, I didn't do the licensing vote. :) Erik gets all the sblame/s credit for that. :-) My feeling would be that the obvious first place to start would be the Board of Trustees. I'd probably start by emailing them and asking them what they think. It seems to me, if I were in your shoes (and I'm carefully taking no position here, not because I don't have an opinion but because I don't have a considered opinion), that the response to that would drive the next set of actions. pb ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Philippe Beaudette wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:47 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: (Particularly looking at you, Philippe, given your work on both the strategic plan and the licensing vote. Gerard's Law and all. ;-) For the record, I didn't do the licensing vote. :) Erik gets all the sblame/s credit for that. :-) Hah, my bad. For some reason, I was associating it with you in my head. I thought you did the strategic plan in 2008 and the licensing update in 2009. Meta-Wiki bears you out, though. Maybe I got the licensing update vote confused with the image filter referendum? Anyway, sorry about that. My feeling would be that the obvious first place to start would be the Board of Trustees. I'd probably start by emailing them and asking them what they think. It seems to me, if I were in your shoes (and I'm carefully taking no position here, not because I don't have an opinion but because I don't have a considered opinion), that the response to that would drive the next set of actions. Well, I think a few of the Board of Trustees members read this mailing list occasionally. Perhaps they'll chime in. I'd not seen https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment. Thank you kindly for that. (Now if only strategy.wikimedia.org were folded back into meta.wikimedia.org so that I had a chance of finding these pages on my own) MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:47 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: As I understand it, the yearly annual Wikimedia Foundation budget is about $35 million. It costs about $2.5 million to keep the sites operational for a year. So even if an endowment weren't large enough to cover well over 130 full-time staff members, it could still keep us up and running for a while. Assuming $2.5 million, that's about $125 million, using your multiply by 50 formula. That's still a shitload of money, but it's much less than $2 billion. :-) I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place to put their money, I think. This used to be my pet project for a while. My first edit to strategy wiki was about an endowment fund[1], I don't think there was anything on the subject before that one. Stu and Eugene's edit on the subject came later, so I'll still take some credit for this one. ;) I brought this up in person to a few board members, and to the foundation staff on another mailing list an year or two ago. I believe they are all aware of the idea and its implication. Eugene suggested at some point that we should come back to this discussion later. The answers were always ambiguous from what I recall. There seems to be absence of a long term sustainable financial vision for the foundation, or if there is, it doesn't seem to be public. The majority of it seems to revolve around retaining x months of operational reserves and putting all the chips on the annual fundraiser. I always thought that's not a very mature financial strategy for an organization. I started discussing this on strategy wiki, etc. and the first thought was separating the core and non-core activities, and then separating the funding models. The core activities are relatively stable, the non-core differentiate a lot more year on year - moving the non-core to a variable model where the revenue would define spending, and core activities to its self-contained sustainable model would be an ideal strategy. The bare-minimum operational cost of hosting, and being online, could be covered with such a fund easily, leaving the annual fundraiser target to be a variable each year without any target, which in turn can define the spending. The correct calculation,as thomas started alluding to would be - operating expenses + projected growth (year on year) + annual inflation rate + reserve/contingency. I had a lot more worked out somewhere according to tax laws and specific interest rates. Either way, the first implication would be that this would nullify to some extent, the majority of the urgency the fundraiser raises, the success of the fundraiser would be irrelevant to the long term existence of the projects. Regards Theo [1]http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Wikipedia_Fund ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
I was marginally involved on this issue two years ago. And by then the focus/priority was to ramp up the Fundraising activities. As this now has been successfully done, I believe this discussion is now much better in timing, and worthwhile to work through I like the idea that the basic running costs for servers etc should have guaranteed income by Endowments, but that the programmatic activities should still be dependent on the yearly fundraising Anders Theo10011 skrev 2013-03-14 19:23: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:47 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: As I understand it, the yearly annual Wikimedia Foundation budget is about $35 million. It costs about $2.5 million to keep the sites operational for a year. So even if an endowment weren't large enough to cover well over 130 full-time staff members, it could still keep us up and running for a while. Assuming $2.5 million, that's about $125 million, using your multiply by 50 formula. That's still a shitload of money, but it's much less than $2 billion. :-) I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place to put their money, I think. This used to be my pet project for a while. My first edit to strategy wiki was about an endowment fund[1], I don't think there was anything on the subject before that one. Stu and Eugene's edit on the subject came later, so I'll still take some credit for this one. ;) I brought this up in person to a few board members, and to the foundation staff on another mailing list an year or two ago. I believe they are all aware of the idea and its implication. Eugene suggested at some point that we should come back to this discussion later. The answers were always ambiguous from what I recall. There seems to be absence of a long term sustainable financial vision for the foundation, or if there is, it doesn't seem to be public. The majority of it seems to revolve around retaining x months of operational reserves and putting all the chips on the annual fundraiser. I always thought that's not a very mature financial strategy for an organization. I started discussing this on strategy wiki, etc. and the first thought was separating the core and non-core activities, and then separating the funding models. The core activities are relatively stable, the non-core differentiate a lot more year on year - moving the non-core to a variable model where the revenue would define spending, and core activities to its self-contained sustainable model would be an ideal strategy. The bare-minimum operational cost of hosting, and being online, could be covered with such a fund easily, leaving the annual fundraiser target to be a variable each year without any target, which in turn can define the spending. The correct calculation,as thomas started alluding to would be - operating expenses + projected growth (year on year) + annual inflation rate + reserve/contingency. I had a lot more worked out somewhere according to tax laws and specific interest rates. Either way, the first implication would be that this would nullify to some extent, the majority of the urgency the fundraiser raises, the success of the fundraiser would be irrelevant to the long term existence of the projects. Regards Theo [1]http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Wikipedia_Fund ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Aha, a welcome topic :) MZMcBride writes: I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place to put their money, I think. 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. It also makes financial sense: Some donors prefer to donate to one. And there are economies of scale: the flexibility of long-term investments let them generate better average returns, and large funds can invest significantly more effectively than small ones. Anders Wennersten m...@anderswennersten.se writes: I was marginally involved on this issue two years ago. And by then the focus/priority was to ramp up the Fundraising activities. As this now has been successfully done, I believe this discussion is now much better in timing, and worthwhile to work through Right. When we first considered an endowment, the WMF didn't have the financial expertise to set one up; later, in 2010, fundraising was growing quite quickly and took priority. Now we are in a good position to plan longer-term investments. This is good timing for another reason as well. These issues were raised at the WMF Audit Committee meeting last week, and the WMF is considering what an endowment might look like. Strong community support would speed that consideration. SJ -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:16 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 14 March 2013 13:00, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.ch wrote: Thanks Andrew and Philippe for your explanation and links. So that is a plan to build a reserve of funds that is so big that the operation can be funded by the capital's gain - interest, dividends... Yes, although reserve generally refers to money kept in case something goes wrong. An endowment would be a separate fund specifically raised for that purpose. It doesn't need to fund the entire budget to be useful, though, and can be built up over time (eg. from legacies in people's wills). Yes. In an university context, which is what I'm most familiar with (and where endowments are very common in the U.S.), there is often a specific endowment campaign to plan for and build the endowment that is separate from normal fundraising -- for instance, you might have a dedicated team that would work on the endowment, solicit wealthy donors, etc. And in turn, the endowment is not meant to fund all expenses or to preempt normal fundraising. It can fund some expenses, and provides long-term stability for the organization. Endowments often come about when you either have a very wealthy donor who is setting up a foundation, or when you have a humanitarian institution that wants to be in business essentially forever (as is the case with most universities). There is complicated law and best practice around endowments that I don't pretend to understand. I do know it's more complicated than setting up a bank account and calling it the endowment fund, at least to do it well. Having an endowment would ideally be a part of the WMF's strategic and long-term financial plan, with some dedicated resources (i.e. staff time to manage the fund and solicit donations) applied to it. And we would want to be clear on what we wanted the endowment to do -- what its role would be over time -- and how it would interact and perhaps affect annual fundraising. 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! -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
My team here at the foundation has begun to do a little leg work so that we are ready to go, if the Board should decide to pursue an endowment. We have begun to tip our toes into the world of planned giving and have had conversations with some of our major donors about it. At this point, the planned gifts are for general support, but our strategy would likely be to direct these types of gifts to an endowment, if we go that route. We also set up a simple page on the foundation site about planned giving or Legacy Gifts, as we are calling it. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Legacy_Gift So far, the conversations have gone well. There is an interesting challenge in that donors have to be convinced that the organization is going to be relevant in 20 or 30 years (or in the case of an endowment – forever). I'd love to hear your best arguments for why that this true. (Or maybe we could devote some thinking to this during the next strategic planning process). Best, Lisa Gruwell On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Aha, a welcome topic :) MZMcBride writes: I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place to put their money, I think. 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. It also makes financial sense: Some donors prefer to donate to one. And there are economies of scale: the flexibility of long-term investments let them generate better average returns, and large funds can invest significantly more effectively than small ones. Anders Wennersten m...@anderswennersten.se writes: I was marginally involved on this issue two years ago. And by then the focus/priority was to ramp up the Fundraising activities. As this now has been successfully done, I believe this discussion is now much better in timing, and worthwhile to work through Right. When we first considered an endowment, the WMF didn't have the financial expertise to set one up; later, in 2010, fundraising was growing quite quickly and took priority. Now we are in a good position to plan longer-term investments. This is good timing for another reason as well. These issues were raised at the WMF Audit Committee meeting last week, and the WMF is considering what an endowment might look like. Strong community support would speed that consideration. SJ -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Lisa Gruwell lgruw...@wikimedia.orgwrote: My team here at the foundation has begun to do a little leg work so that we are ready to go, if the Board should decide to pursue an endowment. We have begun to tip our toes into the world of planned giving and have had conversations with some of our major donors about it. At this point, the planned gifts are for general support, but our strategy would likely be to direct these types of gifts to an endowment, if we go that route. We also set up a simple page on the foundation site about planned giving or Legacy Gifts, as we are calling it. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Legacy_Gift So far, the conversations have gone well. There is an interesting challenge in that donors have to be convinced that the organization is going to be relevant in 20 or 30 years (or in the case of an endowment – forever). I'd love to hear your best arguments for why that this true. (Or maybe we could devote some thinking to this during the next strategic planning process). Best, Lisa Gruwell Thanks Lisa -- now *that's* a good question :) I added a quick section to the endowment page, if people want to discuss there: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment#Will_we_be_relevant_in3F -- phoebe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Aha, a welcome topic :) MZMcBride writes: I think we need to decide, as a community, whether this is something we want. If it is, we should set up an endowment fund sooner rather than later, so that people willing to donate to such an endowment have a place to put their money, I think. 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. It also makes financial sense: Some donors prefer to donate to one. And there are economies of scale: the flexibility of long-term investments let them generate better average returns, and large funds can invest significantly more effectively than small ones. let me play advocatus diaboli here ... the strong point of the wikimedia movement always has been that it attracts small donations, which are of immediate use. some reserves to allow keep the lights on for a couple of years is very understandable. lets assume our donors are average people, people who have the time to click and give 10 dollars. why should somebody who earns a little salary want to give 10 dollars to a foundation which has 40 million on its bank account? ok - you say the movement does not need these little donations any more, because if the foundation would have 800 million dollar it would leave 40 million to spend as well (5% interest rate). but what if the foundation only has 200 million? this earns only 10 million a year, and the sum might be sufficient that we might loose the donors which made this success possible. and you say, some people might really _want_ to donate to an endowment fund, just let the people choose. but - does this choice cannibalize the normal donations of people who do not want to donate to an endowment fund? if yes, then the foundation, the websites, and the content got disconnected from the donors, and from the contributors. advocatus diaboli mode out. rupert. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Erik Moeller wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:47 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: It costs about $2.5 million to keep the sites operational for a year. How did you come up with that number? I used to say $2 million, but Roan recently told me that it had probably gone up since that estimate (from 2009). So now I say $2.5 million. It's advertised on Meta-Wiki here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/?banner=money_or_die. ;-) As I recall, the $2 million (now $2.5 million) figure came from discussions with technical staff about what it would cost to keep the site running for a year and an examination of relevant Wikimedia-related budget breakdowns that were split out between non-technical staff costs, overhead costs, etc. However, following Cunningham's Law, if you have a better figure, please share. :-) We can certainly say it's far less than $35 million to only keep the sites up and running (barebones hosting support and related tech staff costs), the question is how much less. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Last year's financial report shows almost exactly $2.5m for Internet hosting. I'm not sure quite what that covers Only data-center usage (facilities, bandwidth, power). It does not include capital expenditures (servers, storage, network gear, etc.; budgeted at $1.9M in 2012-13) nor ops engineering staffing, nor of course any software engineering staffing or the basics of an organizational support structure (management/administration, legal, etc.). What's a bare minimum amount? It's a hard question to answer, because it depends on what you consider an acceptable bare minimum. - Is it acceptable for the projects to be without legal defense? - Is it acceptable to revert back to a single data center mode of operation? - Is it acceptable for ops to just barely be able to keep the lights on, with minimal effort dedicated to backups/monitoring/maintenance, etc.? - Is it acceptable for there to be no software engineers to aid with reviewing code contributions, and making improvements to the software? and so on. WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The what's the level required for bare survival question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity. I like the fact that megalomania is infectious and escalating disease, which has roots in reality :) I started to write something like: Come on, it's better to have a bare minimum than nothing. Then I realized that WMF endowment needs two year of Mozilla's income. Thus, quite possible for WMF, as well. Not in two, but yes in five or so years. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 8:45 PM, George Herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com wrote:
[Hosting...] Then various operational and administrative costs. My finger in
the
air estimate would be a total of about $4m-$5m.
It is important to know how much money is going on essentials and how much
on nice-to-haves. (That ought to be how the core/non-core split works,
really)
I think a useful breakdown is
{([hosting + core operations] + core projects) + additional
projects} = budget
The boundaries get fuzzier, moving out.
Hosting :Bandwidth and hardware; has two line-items in the budget.
Core ops : Everything needed to make hosting work with [reasonable]
uptime / disaster response / critical updates.
Core projects : Everything needed to make the Projects and
Foundation work with [reasonable] efficiency and accessibility.
Including fundraising, financial and legal project support,
development of major features, mediawiki platform innovation, support
for community tech innovation.
Additional projects A : Efforts to upgrade reasonable service to
excellent. Support for new Projects. Experiments in engagement /
collaboration / governance.
Additional projects B : Work to bridge gaps in current projects,
research to find solutions to unsolved problems, outreach to new
audiences. Other exploratory work, e.g., in design / communication /
education / dissemination / translation.
There are other ways we could classify our work. There are options
for in-kind donations or volunteer-run versions of many costs, though
this is not always sustainable. There are options for degrading the
quality of services rather than dropping them entirely.
This classification isn't perfectly tied to long-term importance: it
focuses on things we've already done and want to protect. Something
supported by an additional project today may become a core project
tomorrow, or key to the future of the movement... or it may be spun
off or handed off to a partner.
Last year, our definition of non-core WMF projects was I believe
similar to group B above.
SJ
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
We also have to consider what these costs will be in 5 years and beyond to
know really how big an endowment would need to be. This will require some
fairly complicated projects, that will most certainly be wrong at some
point in time. :)
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:16 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 8:45 PM, George Herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com wrote:
[Hosting...] Then various operational and administrative costs. My
finger in the
air estimate would be a total of about $4m-$5m.
It is important to know how much money is going on essentials and how
much
on nice-to-haves. (That ought to be how the core/non-core split works,
really)
I think a useful breakdown is
{([hosting + core operations] + core projects) + additional
projects} = budget
The boundaries get fuzzier, moving out.
Hosting :Bandwidth and hardware; has two line-items in the budget.
Core ops : Everything needed to make hosting work with [reasonable]
uptime / disaster response / critical updates.
Core projects : Everything needed to make the Projects and
Foundation work with [reasonable] efficiency and accessibility.
Including fundraising, financial and legal project support,
development of major features, mediawiki platform innovation, support
for community tech innovation.
Additional projects A : Efforts to upgrade reasonable service to
excellent. Support for new Projects. Experiments in engagement /
collaboration / governance.
Additional projects B : Work to bridge gaps in current projects,
research to find solutions to unsolved problems, outreach to new
audiences. Other exploratory work, e.g., in design / communication /
education / dissemination / translation.
There are other ways we could classify our work. There are options
for in-kind donations or volunteer-run versions of many costs, though
this is not always sustainable. There are options for degrading the
quality of services rather than dropping them entirely.
This classification isn't perfectly tied to long-term importance: it
focuses on things we've already done and want to protect. Something
supported by an additional project today may become a core project
tomorrow, or key to the future of the movement... or it may be spun
off or handed off to a partner.
Last year, our definition of non-core WMF projects was I believe
similar to group B above.
SJ
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Only data-center usage (facilities, bandwidth, power). It does not include capital expenditures (servers, storage, network gear, etc.; budgeted at $1.9M in 2012-13) nor ops engineering staffing, nor of course any software engineering staffing or the basics of an organizational support structure (management/administration, legal, etc.). I'm not technically inclined, but those numbers sound odd. Maybe I'm missing something? The traffic ranking didn't go up nearly as substantially in the last couple of years as the hosting and cap-ex mentioned above. The total listed revenue for 06/07 is around 2.7 Million, 07/08 is 5 million, 08/09 is 8.6 million from there on it started doubling, but that was the total revenue at the time, assuming it had to be higher than the actual hosting cost. I don't think there were any substantial visitor milestones crossed after that, another argument could be made that the costs associated with hosting went down in that period. Either way, the two don't seem to be growing at the same pace. What's a bare minimum amount? It's a hard question to answer, because it depends on what you consider an acceptable bare minimum. - Is it acceptable for the projects to be without legal defense? - Is it acceptable to revert back to a single data center mode of operation? - Is it acceptable for ops to just barely be able to keep the lights on, with minimal effort dedicated to backups/monitoring/maintenance, etc.? - Is it acceptable for there to be no software engineers to aid with reviewing code contributions, and making improvements to the software? and so on. How about door #3. Any idea what amount that would be close to. Ops keeping the light on seems like a good definition of core. WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The what's the level required for bare survival question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity. In 2011, I calculated that amount to be closer to $6M/year from a diversified low-to-medium risk portfolio. A fund like that would need to have a variable yield above a certain set amount to negate any year-on-year increases. I believe there are companies that can calculate the annual projected cost over the next 10 years and suggest options. On Fri, Mar 15, 2013, Lisa Gruwell lgruw...@wikimedia.org wrote: We also have to consider what these costs will be in 5 years and beyond to know really how big an endowment would need to be. This will require some fairly complicated projects, that will most certainly be wrong at some point in time. :) Actually, that's the benefit of separating the costs between core and non-core. The projection for the hosting and bare-minimum operations already has 10 year of past data to draw from. The cost would also remain the same for every large internet property, things like bandwidth and datacenter usage would be fairly the same for everyone. The non-core expenses however are a different story. They depend on whatever direction the foundation chooses. Those expenses would be nearly impossible to predict from what I've seen. Regards Theo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
currently the bylaws say: transfer the money to any 501(c) organisation. wmf would not be allowed to be charitable in switzerland as it is not guaranteed the donors money end up what it was ment for: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bylaws#Section_2._Distribution_of_Assets. rupert. On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 6:17 AM, Peter Southwood peter.southw...@telkomsa.net wrote: Parallel to that question, is what happens to the endowment if the WMF is wound up. This would be of some interest to possible donors. In principle I am in favour of an endowment. Cheers, Peter - Original Message - From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 10:52 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Lisa Gruwell lgruw...@wikimedia.orgwrote: My team here at the foundation has begun to do a little leg work so that we are ready to go, if the Board should decide to pursue an endowment. We have begun to tip our toes into the world of planned giving and have had conversations with some of our major donors about it. At this point, the planned gifts are for general support, but our strategy would likely be to direct these types of gifts to an endowment, if we go that route. We also set up a simple page on the foundation site about planned giving or Legacy Gifts, as we are calling it. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Legacy_Gift So far, the conversations have gone well. There is an interesting challenge in that donors have to be convinced that the organization is going to be relevant in 20 or 30 years (or in the case of an endowment – forever). I'd love to hear your best arguments for why that this true. (Or maybe we could devote some thinking to this during the next strategic planning process). Best, Lisa Gruwell Thanks Lisa -- now *that's* a good question :) I added a quick section to the endowment page, if people want to discuss there: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment#Will_we_be_relevant_in3F -- phoebe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2240 / Virus Database: 2641/5673 - Release Date: 03/14/13 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
On 3/14/2013 10:26 PM, Theo10011 wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Only data-center usage (facilities, bandwidth, power). It does not include capital expenditures (servers, storage, network gear, etc.; budgeted at $1.9M in 2012-13) nor ops engineering staffing, nor of course any software engineering staffing or the basics of an organizational support structure (management/administration, legal, etc.). I'm not technically inclined, but those numbers sound odd. Maybe I'm missing something? The traffic ranking didn't go up nearly as substantially in the last couple of years as the hosting and cap-ex mentioned above. I'm not sure why you would use traffic ranking for financial analysis, even the envelope-and-napkin kind of analysis we're engaging in here. I'm pretty confident that just because Google has been sitting at #1 for some time, it doesn't mean that their core operational costs have remained flat over that period. Aside from that, it's only recently that Wikimedia sites have approached having the kind of redundancy and failover capabilities we've talked about needing for a long time. That's at least one example of something that can add pretty significant costs without having a material impact on traffic (except in emergencies, of course). --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment
Hi. I've started collecting notes about a possible Wikimedia or Wikimedia Foundation endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment. Any additional relevant links to past discussions or thoughts about this idea are welcome on that page, its talk page, or this mailing list. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
