Sloan Foundation

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a US-based nonprofit organization and major donor to the Wikimedia Foundation, having cumulatively donated $14,355,000.

In 2008, the Sloan Foundation donated $3,000,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to help develop its organizational capacity, improve the quality of Wikipedia, and develop the Flagged Revisions extension. The grant was received over three years, at 1 million dollars per year. It was at the time the largest grant ever given to the WMF.^[1]

In 2011, as the Sloan Foundation was considering renewing its three-year grant, they indicated an interest in having a Board observer at the WMF Board of Trustees.^[2] Following discussion within the Board, the position of Board observer was established, and Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation became the first (and, so long as the position existed, only) formal Board observer.^[3]

The Sloan Foundation donated another $3,000,000 in 2011,^[4] and another $3,000,000 in 2014.^[5] In 2016, the Sloan Foundation gave $3,015,000 towards developing Structured Data on Commons,^[6] followed by a $2.1 million grant in 2020 to support the Structured Data Across Wikimedia project.^[7] From 2016-2020, Sloan funded Wikicite, a series of conferences and workshops in support of developing open citations and linked bibliographic data, with several grants. ^[8]

In 2020, Sloan gave $215,633 towards efforts by the Digital Public Library to provide digital assets from DPLA's contributors to Wikimedia Commons.^[9] The Wikimedia Foundation provided the project with additional funding in 2021.^[10]

Doron Weber, currently the Vice President of Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has served on the Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board since July 2021.

Notes and references

↑ Mailing list announcement, WMF press release, Signpost report
↑ Board minutes, 2011-02-22: "Sloan Foundation, observer status, open Board meetings"

↑ Weber was appointed in July 2011, renewed in 2012 and 2013. The position was trialed for a year, formalized in 2012; the policy was later superceded by the 2015 visitors policy. Weber's presence (and, occasionally, participation) at Board meetings was noted numerous times in Board minutes both during and after this period.

The rationale for the Board observers policy was discussed during a Board IRC meeting in June 2011:

  [11:59pm] wing2: Maybe some of you know that the board had decided to start an experiment on allow a board visitor to take part in the board meetings
  [11:59pm] wing2: The idea is to improve transparency to our major institutional donors and contributors
  [12:00am] wing2: There were some discussion inside of the board about this since this is very new for us and we don't know how it would work out
  [12:00am] wing2: and if it would affect our work and how we talk to each other on the meetings
  [...]
  [12:02am] wing2: Our first observer will probably someone from the Sloan Foundation
  [12:03am] wing2: since they donated to us three million dollars in the past and will do so again
  [...]
  [12:04am] wing2: He or she will visite our autumn meeting in October, this is the current plan
  [...]
  [12:06am] wing2: Let's say you are the leader of a Foundation and gives another organization a lot of money, you want to be sure that they are trustworthy and efficient and doing a good work
  [12:06am] wing2: This is the basic idea of an observer
  [12:07am] wing2: The observer just observes so that he or she can assess if the money you donated are a good decision

("wing2" is Ting Chen, aka User:Wing, then Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.)

↑ WMF press release, Signpost report
↑ Details on Sloan's website: https://sloan.org/grant-detail/6763 "Over the next five years, grant funds will be used in a series of projects to bolster Wikipedia’s technical infrastructure, improve editor engagement, increase the number of women editors, increase the number of contributions via mobile devices, better integrate multimedia offerings such as video, audio, and photography into Wikipedia pages, and help Wikipedia improve and monitor article quality while moving toward self-sustainability."
↑ See grant information, WMF press release, Diff post. The WMF presented a 53-page report on their progress to the Sloan Foundation nine months in, and a 57-page report the following year.
↑ See grant proposal, Sloan Foundation summary
↑ WikiCite_2016#Funding, [1], WikiCite_2017#Funding, [2], WikiCite_2018#Funding, [3], WikiCite/grants, WikiCite/e-scholarship
↑
- Grant details: Description: "To develop infrastructure for the ingestion of data from national aggregators into Wikimedia Commons using content from the Digital Public Library of America in a pilot effort"
- DPLA announcement
↑ DPLA's project overview

[1] Mailing list announcement, WMF press release, Signpost report

[2] Board minutes, 2011-02-22: "Sloan Foundation, observer status, open Board meetings"

[3] Weber was appointed in July 2011, renewed in 2012 and 2013. The position was trialed for a year, formalized in 2012; the policy was later superceded by the 2015 visitors policy. Weber's presence (and, occasionally, participation) at Board meetings was noted numerous times in Board minutes both during and after this period.

The rationale for the Board observers policy was discussed during a Board IRC meeting in June 2011:
[11:59pm] wing2: Maybe some of you know that the board had decided to start an experiment on allow a board visitor to take part in the board meetings [11:59pm] wing2: The idea is to improve transparency to our major institutional donors and contributors [12:00am] wing2: There were some discussion inside of the board about this since this is very new for us and we don't know how it would work out [12:00am] wing2: and if it would affect our work and how we talk to each other on the meetings [...] [12:02am] wing2: Our first observer will probably someone from the Sloan Foundation [12:03am] wing2: since they donated to us three million dollars in the past and will do so again [...] [12:04am] wing2: He or she will visite our autumn meeting in October, this is the current plan [...] [12:06am] wing2: Let's say you are the leader of a Foundation and gives another organization a lot of money, you want to be sure that they are trustworthy and efficient and doing a good work [12:06am] wing2: This is the basic idea of an observer [12:07am] wing2: The observer just observes so that he or she can assess if the money you donated are a good decision

("wing2" is Ting Chen, aka User:Wing, then Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.)

[4] WMF press release, Signpost report

[5] Details on Sloan's website: https://sloan.org/grant-detail/6763 "Over the next five years, grant funds will be used in a series of projects to bolster Wikipedia’s technical infrastructure, improve editor engagement, increase the number of women editors, increase the number of contributions via mobile devices, better integrate multimedia offerings such as video, audio, and photography into Wikipedia pages, and help Wikipedia improve and monitor article quality while moving toward self-sustainability."

[6] See grant information, WMF press release, Diff post. The WMF presented a 53-page report on their progress to the Sloan Foundation nine months in, and a 57-page report the following year.

[7] See grant proposal, Sloan Foundation summary

[8] WikiCite_2016#Funding, [1], WikiCite_2017#Funding, [2], WikiCite_2018#Funding, [3], WikiCite/grants, WikiCite/e-scholarship

[9] 
Grant details: Description: "To develop infrastructure for the ingestion of data from national aggregators into Wikimedia Commons using content from the Digital Public Library of America in a pilot effort"

DPLA announcement

[10] Grant details: Description: "To develop infrastructure for the ingestion of data from national aggregators into Wikimedia Commons using content from the Digital Public Library of America in a pilot effort"

[11] DPLA announcement

[10] DPLA's project overview

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