Wikimedia welcomes $3 million gift from the Sloan Foundation

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Today we are very pleased to announce a great gift from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  For the second time since 2008, the Sloan Foundation is providing us with a $3 million, unrestricted grant to support the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of its main goals as outlined in our recently published strategic plan.
As described by our Executive Director Sue Gardner in today’s press release:

“Three years ago, at a time when cultural elites were ambivalent about Wikipedia, the Sloan Foundation took a risk by supporting us. I will always be grateful to Sloan for its courage in doing that,” said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Today the academic community in particular has begun to appreciate Wikipedia, and is starting to work closely with us to make it even better. I’m grateful to Sloan for sending an important signal that helped make that happen, and I’m thrilled at this renewed expression of confidence in our work.”

The grant comes to us as part of the Sloan Foundation’s Access to Knowledge component of its Digital Information Technology program. Sloan Vice President Doron Weber reflected on their perspective on Wikipedia:

“Wikipedia embodies the ideal values of the world wide web and we are proud to be part of this bold endeavor to use the wisdom and the altruism of the crowd to create the biggest, most up-to-date and most open global encyclopedia in human history.”

This is great news for Wikimedia Foundation as we push into our strategic planning priorities: increasing Wikipedia’s quality, increasing the number and demographic diversity of its editors, and reaching more readers, particularly in the global south.
Our thanks to the Sloan Foundation for their continued support!
Jay Walsh, Communications

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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