Wikimedia Foundation receives $500,000 in support from Hewlett Foundation

San Francisco, CA (Gawkwire.com) The Wikimedia Foundation, the non- profit organization that operates the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its work bringing free educational content to everyone on the planet.

With this grant, the Hewlett Foundation acknowledges the important role Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia Foundation projects play in making 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,” said Barbara Chow, director of the education program at Hewlett. “We look forward to a fruitful relationship.”

The grant to the Wikimedia Foundation is part of more than $100 million in grants since 2001 that the Hewlett Foundation has made to promote Open Educational Resources around the world. The movement promotes the availability of high quality educational materials that anyone can use and edit for free.

Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said her organization is committed to being an integral part of the Open Educational Resources community.

"The Hewlett Foundation's support comes at a critical time,” Gardner said. “We’ve just begun the planning that will help us identify how to maximize our impact around the world. This support will help us to execute our priorities for the current year, and enable us to plan for the future."

As part of its current strategic planning process, the Wikimedia Foundation recently launched a first Call for Proposals from the Wikimedia community, through a public wiki at <http://strategy.wikimedia.org  >. The planning process will bring together volunteers and stakeholders to examine strategies to improve the reach, participation, and quality of Wikimedia's projects. Growth in these three areas will significantly enhance the role of Wikimedia's projects as Open Educational Resources.

In addition to its strategic planning process, Wikimedia's priorities for the current fiscal year include two major initiatives to improve the user-friendliness of Wikimedia's software, the development of a set of training materials to engage new potential volunteer editors, the establishment of key metrics tracking Wikimedia's impact, and improved access to Wikimedia project data for researchers.