The nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia has received a US$500,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its effort to make educational information freely accessible.
"The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement," Barbara Chow, director of the education program at Hewlett, said in a statement.
A Wikimedia representative said the grant is coming at a "critical time" for the foundation that operates the online encyclopedia.
"We've just begun the planning that will help us identify how to maximize our impact around the world," Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said in the statement. "This support will help us to execute our priorities for the current year, and enable us to plan for the future."
The San Francisco-based Wikimedia said it plans to use the grant to improve the user-friendliness of Wikimedia's software, develop training materials to engage new potential volunteer editors, and establish metrics to track the foundation's impact.
The Hewlett Foundation has bestowed more than US$100 million in grants since 2001 to make educational materials available to all people for free.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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Wikimedia receives, and giveth to Wikia, Inc.
It is worth noting that when late last year the Ruth and Frank Stanton Fund gifted the Wikimedia Foundation with over $800,000 for a Usability Initiative, one of the first damn things the Foundation did was to run a lopsided "office space search", where -- SURPRISE, SURPRISE -- the winning bid (though not the lowest bid) went to... Wikia, Inc.! So Jimmy Wales sits on the Board of Trustees that oversaw the award of monthly rental checks to the new landlord -- a privately-held company co-founded by Wales. Talk about self-dealing!
Posted by Gregory Kohs on Tuesday, August 25 2009 09:55 AM