Thanks Scott, this is important context. I think Wikimedia gets rather too little of its funding from other foundations, through cooperations with like-minded organizations, and from national/international initiatives to educate and to preserve culture & knowledge.
Scott writes: > MZMcBride wrote: > > > Why ask for and take the money? The Wikimedia Foundation can raise > > $250,000 in a few days (maybe hours) by placing ads on a few large > > Wikipedias soliciting donations. Why take on a restricted grant, with its > > necessary reporting overhead and other administrative costs? > > > Responding just to this small portion of MZMcBride's email: > > Sue explained to me that the goal was to have WMF's budget be roughly 50% > grants and 50% user contributions to guard against unexpected fragility > with either of these funding sources. There is/was the continuing concern > that folks accessing wikimedia content through non-traditional sources > (google snippets, mobile apps, etc) will not see or respond to a banner > campaign, so that sooner or later one of our banner campaigns will come up > very short. Further, a reliance on banners for funding creates perverse > incentives that discourage us from fully embracing potential users of our > content who may bypass the "official" clients and their banner ads. > It also makes for a very inward-focused and narrow sort of strategy: "How can we make our few banner projects work better / attract more people" rather than "how can we make knowledge more accessible to everyone in the world, including by supporting and enhancing other excellent projects". If you start with funders and organizations whose missions are similar to Wikimedia's, working with them on a grant is a way of making them part of the community: a successful engagement results in them learning more about the impact and value of our mission, and supporting or encouraging more work along those lines with their other grantees. It also builds a relationship and trust within the circle of similarly-minded organizations (in this example, grantors; but this applies equally well to other sorts of partners), which can be drawn on in the future if there were a real crisis or urgent need. Mission-aligned donors & grantors & infrastructure-providers & archivists are all part of our community, in addition to having collections or money or services to contribute. Which is an extra reason to let them contribute that is easiest for them, as long as the overhead required to accept that contribution is not too large. I'm sure small donors will continue to be the dominant source of funding for a long time, perhaps for as long as it exists. But a bit more diversity in funding sources can improve consistency, predictability, and security of support. SJ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
