The Longest Now

Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia Foundation’s amazing Executive Director, recently announced plans to step down later this year, and has launched a search for her successor. She is one of the most insightful and collaborative voices in the movement, and a good friend. And she has led some of our most ambitious organizational and financial shifts: our focus on individual fundraising, the transition to a community-led funds dissemination process, and a growing attention to grantmaking. It is hard to imagine the Foundation without her…!!

We have been discussing this internally among the Board for a month now; and the transition planned is gradual: the search is expected to take til the end of this year. But I am still getting used to the idea; it has been a long and wonderful road we have travelled during her tenure. We are also reaching the end of our first round of long-term planning, so this year and next will be a good time for a new ED to help shape the Foundation’s future and how we frame our work.

A rundown of outside news coverage: