Talk:Wikimedia Endowment

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Financial Statements published

Hi all,

A quick note to let you all know that the financial statements of the Endowment from 2016-2023 have been published on Governance Wiki.

Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

broken link

In the second paragraph, second sentence, there is a redlink which should go to an IRS determination letter. Kablammo (talk) 13:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

REITs vs. homebuilders

How do Endowment officials feel about moving from real estate to equities working to alleviate the housing crisis? Competing with homebuyers and exposure to commercial real estate during the remote work revolution both seem questionable, if for different reasons. Sandizer (talk) 22:48, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Sandizer, thanks for the question. The Endowment team is currently reevaluating its asset allocation, in general. This may lead to a reduced exposure to REITs. Primarily, this decision will be informed based on the Endowment’s risk appetite, return needs, and Spending Policy goals. The Endowment is not an impact investor – any exposure to the residential sector of the real estate market is limited (based on allocations within the respective REIT managers). The REITs the Endowment is currently invested in do provide diversification through exposure to sectors like Data Centers, Healthcare, Industrial, Self-Storage, etc. Because sectors like Office Space and Towers may be highly sensitive to the new nature of the post-COVID economy, the Endowment may reconsider its real estate allocation on a risk/return basis rather than on an activism-oriented investment strategy. CVirtue (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Sustainable investment

Hello @JBrungs (WMF), is the information on the Sustainability Initiative page in the section "A sustainable investment strategy for the Wikimedia Endowment" still correct, or could it be updated or should it be corrected or amended? Thank you, Gnom (talk) 13:13, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

This is a very good question! I believe that Gnom is referring specifically to this section. At a minimum, it needs to be updated from status of "Waiting" dated 2021, as it is now April 2025. More relevant to my, uhm, our sustainability enquiry, is that the "Sustainable Investment Strategy for the WMF Endowment" (Chief Advancement Officer User:Lgruwell-WMF is listed as the responsible party) is inconsistent with what CVirtue (WMF) stated--emphasis mine--on this very page (see section immediately prior to Gnom's inquiry):

"The Endowment team is currently reevaluating its asset allocation, in general... Primarily, this decision will be informed based on the Endowment’s risk appetite, return needs, and Spending Policy goals. The Endowment is not an impact investor.

and

the Endowment may reconsider its real estate allocation on a risk/return basis rather than on an activism-oriented investment strategy.

So, it is unclear to me whether the Endowment invests funds based on activism (i.e. social impact investing) or on risk/return given risk appetite metrics.

Finally, I'm not sure why "Spending Policy goals" would be relevant to Endowment investing policy, given that the Endowment is not used for Wikipedia operating expenses. I'm not sure what "Spending Policy goals" means though.--FeralOink (talk) 13:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, @FeralOink. I might add that the endowment investment policy may very well have sustainability-oriented aspects without making us an "impact investor". Gnom (talk) 19:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)