[Foundation-l] Wikimedia finances and the economy

Sat Oct 11 16:01:17 UTC 2008

2008/10/11 Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'll let someone in the know give a full answer, but in the past Sue
>> has said that the easiest way (or, at least, one of the easy ways) to
>> deal with a short term lack of funds is to defer planned hires. There
>> are certainly hires planned that could be deferred, so I guess that's
>> what they'll do if they need to.
>
> Probably a good idea too, but not adding new spending is maybe not
> going to be enough if our level of donations decreases significantly.
> They would have to cut their current spending if they don't get enough
> donations to cover their costs.
>
> Admittedly it doesn't make a lot of sense to speculate about this
> until we see what the donations situation looks like. For all we know
> we could end up with plenty of donations and not have any problems.

Of course, cutting new costs isn't going to be enough if the income
actually reduces, but I think that's unlikely. We have new staff
working full time on finding new sources of donations and grants, I
doubt the economic crisis will be enough to cancel that out entirely.
Donations from individuals may well reduce enormously if we go into a
global recession, but I'd think charitable foundations will continue
handing out grants regardless (in fact, if memory serves, US law
requires such foundations to spend a certain amount of their funds
each year, so they can't just stop handing out money until the economy
picks up again). But, as you say, this is just speculation, the only
way to know for sure what will happen is to wait and see.