Forwarding to the Treasurers and Affiliate mailing lists for their consideration.
Pine
That's a good question.
Alternatives to private sector equity investments include public-sector bonds, as well as commodities and currencies. While I wouldn't recommend that WMF do either of the latter two, there might be some reasonable choices for WMF in the public sector bond market.
In the private sector, I hope that WMF would be very careful about the ethics of the companies and industries in which it chooses to invest.
Pine
Thanks!
I added a section to the talk page asking about how we would actually go
about investing... the purpose of an endowment is to let it grow and just
spend some of the interest, but that growth doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Investment happens by putting money into other peoples' businesses and
letting them pay you back with interest.
So we'd be asking donors for tens of millions of dollars to invest in
third-party businesses -- a fundamental change in our fundraising
proposition. Thinking about our social responsibility as an investor is
probably worthwhile.
-- brion
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Hi all-
>
> For several years, the Wikimedia movement has been having discussions
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment> about whether and when to
> begin
> building an endowment. I put an essay up on meta recently in an attempt to
> rekindle this conversation with the community. We included launching an
> endowment in the FY 2015-16 annual plan. We also plan to have this
> conversation as a part of the larger strategic planning process because
> building an endowment means prioritizing some future needs over some
> current needs.
>
> Before we can begin to support an endowment, there is strategic groundwork
> that should be completed to ensure that the effort is both thoughtful and
> successful. To help get the conversation moving, I seeded the discussion
> page with a few questions that we are hoping you will help us answer.
> Please add the questions I didn't think to ask, too. We'd appreciate
> hearing your thoughts on this and your help in thinking through some of the
> strategic questions.
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
> Best regards,
>
> Lisa Gruwell
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>