Directory:Wikimedia Foundation/Grand Donors

The Grand Donors are individuals who contribute more than $1,000 of their own money to the Wikimedia Foundation. The 2007 fund drive to monetize the 2008 budget includes allocations of:

• $182,000 for Mike Godwin and the Foundation's legal hassles;
• $201,000 to help all of the Board members with their travel to the new headquarters in the very expensive city of San Francisco;
• $509,000 for Sue Gardner and her executive office staff; and,
• $699,000 for overall finance and administration.

Only four percent of the Wikimedia budget goes toward "Program Services" which are supposed to be the inspirational intentions of any well-meaning non-profit agency.

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Click here for the source of the following data.

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1. Tyko Strassen - $1,000
Mathematician (specializing in computer science), full professor at a university of applied sciences, teacher of different didactic courses (in German) for university professors, registered as a Swiss Engineer STV.

"I use wikipedia almost every day. Best project on earth - keep it up!"

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2. Anonymous - $1,500
Who can be identified as such (sha1:338c3706b3f34653d195ee40a310f73d2fb52b5c), but only by himself.

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3. Joichi "Joi" Ito - $1,000
An American-educated Japanese activist, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Ito is the chairman of the board of Creative Commons and the chairman of Six Apart Japan. He is on the board of Technorati, Digital Garage, WITNESS, Pia Corporation, Socialtext, and iCommons. But since he is not on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation, he is not entitled to be on the board of Wikia, Inc.

Haven't we seen you moblogging, Joi?

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4. Anonymous - $1,000
This one decided to be really anonymous, with no hash function.

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5. Michael Minor - $10,000
There are lots of guys with the name "Michael Minor", but we're going to assume it's this one, until proven otherwise. A leading creative and Internet marketing designer in the Chicago area. He has worked with large national advertising and design agencies such as Leo Burnett and Ogilvy.

"Information should be free and accessible!"

Well, actually, its not that Michael Minor. Nor is it the guy that helped create the starship Enterprise for the first Star Trek movie. Nor is it the Tacoma area truck driver and skydiver. Instead, it is me, the founder of good.net.
I am not a billionaire who currently lives in Greenland, Ohio as previously stated on wikipedia.

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6. Anonymous - $2,000
Unwilling to leave a name, since $2,000 is what a typical cotton farm family of 10 persons would earn in a whole year in Chad, Benin, or Mali, according to OxFam. Better that this money go to an encyclopedia that might help North Africans more fully understand their role in the History of western Eurasia.

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7. John Dash - $1,000
There are two notable men by the name of "John Dash". Which one would be pumping $1,000 off to the Wikimedia Foundation? The church pastor who founded the New Beginning World Outreach...

Or, the Physics professor from Portland State University who thinks cold fusion will work someday...

Being that Wikipedia is managed in a half-crazy manner, and cold fusion is another half-crazy idea out of Utah, we're guessing this donor is the physicist.

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8. Bill Liao - $1,000
Bill is a Chinese-Australian who runs the website Xing.com. It's a Top 2000 site which is a knock-off of LinkedIn.com, a Top 200 site.

"The future potential of Wikipedia for humanity may manifest positively only if the quality of information is upheld!"

Too bad your $1,000 isn't going to help uphold the quality of information in Wikipedia, considering how it's the encyclopedia anyone can ruin.

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9. Anonymous - $1,000
Another nameless, faceless donor.

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10. Andrew MacMillan - $3,000
There are too many guys with the name "Andrew MacMillan" to identify this one. One thing is certain, Spelling is one of the important powers of education that bypassed this MacMillan.

"Thx. education is the most important of all. comtinue to educate and enlighten people with the power attatined from education. and find ways to innovatively expand. You will always have your core, whi"

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11. Anonymous - $1,000
"worth every penny... great work!"
Not worth leaving your name, though?

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12. Robert Keeley - $1,500
Could be the British composer. Nah! We're guessing it's either a guy who makes guitar effects pedals:

Or, it's the professor emeritus at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who has research interests in Venture Capital, Management of New Ventures, and Management of Technology Based Companies. Jimbo's probably hoodwinked him about how great an investment Wikia, Inc. is.

"May this information stream reach many new people."
But what if the stream is amber-hued and body-temperature, dude?

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13. Max Levchin - $1,024
Max is the co-founder (Jimbo, that doesn't mean "founder", and see how easy it is to say?) and former CTO of PayPal. It's fitting that he'd make a big donation to Wikipedia, since PayPal's going to make a good $50,000 or so from fees off this fund drive.

"you make my brain 2^10 times smarter"
The above high-quality image is provided courtesy of the encyclopedia project that has immortalized Max Levchin in its own pages.

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14. Anonymous - $1,000
"Learning enriches all our lives and can bring peace and security to almost seven billion 'smart monkeys' You create the most powerful tool for learning on our small simple planet."
Fairly obvious why someone wouldn't want to sign their name to that hogwash.

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15. Alex Poon - $1,111
Poon (God bless that surname) is the co-founder (see, again, Jimbo -- it's easy to say "co-founder") of Bonfire Media.

"Go Wikipedia!"

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16. Max Pucher - $1,000
This makes two Maxes donating big bucks to Wikipedia. Max J. Pucher was born 1954 in Austria. His parents knew that trouble lay ahead when he built his first black-powder rocket that actually flew at age twelve. It exploded just two feet above his head. College educated to design electrical power plants, he joined IBM for unknown reasons to work in large-scale computing, which he knew nothing about at the time. He and his wife of 25 years, Annemarie, have lived in the 80's in the Middle East, where his unique interest and insight into religious conflict was shaped. In 1988, they started their own software business and its continuing success still keeps them both travelling the globe. After working in the United States during the Internet mania, they now live on Antigua in the West Indies.

"Wikipedia ist Freiheit des Wissens!"

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17. Anonymous - $2,500
Another frightened donor.

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18. Anonymous - $1,113.38
The first non-US-dollar donor, this anonymous contributor ponied up 750 Euros. His or her crazy statement was something about erasing a debt and that the butterfly thanks Wikipedia. In French: "Effacer une dette somme + cube a E.C le papillon Merci Wikipédia"

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19. Anonymous - $2,000
Another nameless donor.

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20. Anonymous - $1,000
"Wikipedia Rules!"
Dude, it also Totally Rocks!

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21. Ruthann Harnisch - $1,000
After retiring from her journalism career (including a stint at WTVF), she chaired the board of More Than Money, a national nonprofit assisting top wealth-holders to put their money where their values are. She may be the sexiest Grand Donor to the Wikimedia Foundation, ever.

"With thanks to all who make Wikipedia possible"

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22. M. Amy Batchelor - $1,000
Co-founder of the Anchor Point Gift Fund in Boulder, Colorado, along with husband Bradley Feld, who is managing director of Mobius Venture Capital and author of "Feld Thoughts".

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23. Lawrence Lessig - $1,000
Best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications. He is Jimmy Wales' newest buddy as Wikipedia seeks to corrupt the GFDL license into something the Creative Commons license can tolerate. Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons. Lessig must think Jimbo is one big headache:

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24. Anonymous - $1,000
Another nameless donor, hoping their grand doesn't go toward the Carolyn Doran Legal Fund.

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25. Brooke Burgess - $4,000
Holy moley -- four grand! We think that Burgess is a former video game producer, but for four grand, he must be wanting to advertise something besides his past career in video games, right?

"Ubermind, Inc."
Ah, that explains it. He's probably a part of the Ubermind consultancy now.

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25. Vinod Khosla - $500,000
Half a million bucks. Who would donate $500,000 to the WMF? Vinod Khosla is described in the July/August 2008 issue of Fast Company as follows:

• "...had no people sense..." "He would go through the factory floor and terrorize people and shut down the line. There was Vinod's way and no other way. It drove his cofounders crazy." (according to a former Sun Microsystems director)
• The article continues, stating that when Khosla was promoted to Chairman, he boycotted four consecutive board meetings, "sitting resentfully alone in his office". Then he was fired.
• Another fellow director described Khosla as "massively intrusive".
• Still another advised, "If Vinod's on the board, the CEO needs a senior vice president in charge of managing him."

(Vinod Khosla at the Web 2.0 Conference 2005. *Credit: James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, Inc. *Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/50041827/in/set-1076331/ For higher resulutions contact duncan@x180.net. Template:Cc-by-2.0 [[c)

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