We are excited to announce a matching gift, from Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board member Peter Baldwin and his wife Lisbet Rausing, co-founders of the Arcadia Fund, of $5 million to the Wikimedia Endowment.

Lisbet and Peter’s gift is the largest single gift to the Wikimedia Endowment to date. This grant was matched by $5 million in donations collected from our online and major gifts team’s efforts in FY 2016–17. In total, these gifts will increase the size of the Endowment by $10 million.

“We thank Lisbet and Peter for their long-standing support to the Wikimedia projects, and their gift to the Wikimedia Endowment for the preservation and dissemination of free knowledge,” said Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Their generous gift, matched by the support of hundreds of thousands of donations from individual donors, will help us ensure knowledge remains free and open for the benefit of generations to come.”

These gifts provide vital momentum to the Wikimedia Endowment Campaign and to our belief that free knowledge is the foundation for human potential, opportunity and freedom. Since the launch of the Endowment in January 2015, the campaign has raised over $17.6 million from generous donors, philanthropists and community members.

“We firmly believe at Arcadia that knowledge should belong to all, without restriction, and that is why we are supporting the Endowment,” said Peter Baldwin, co-founder of the Arcadia Fund and Wikimedia Endowment Board member. “Lisbet and I hope this gift inspires Wikimedia’s global community of supporters to give. The world needs Wikipedia, and we’re proud to support the Wikimedia Foundation’s continued growth, financial health and commitment to keeping knowledge accessible to all in perpetuity.”

The Arcadia Fund is one of the UK’s largest philanthropic foundations, focusing on preserving cultural heritage and the environment, and promoting open access.

We’re very grateful to Lisbet and Peter for their long-standing support of the Wikimedia Foundation and their gift to the Wikimedia Endowment, and to all those who contributed to the annual campaign. Their support for Wikimedia and the Endowment will help the movement meet its vision of offering the world free access to the sum of all knowledge—in perpetuity.

Kaitlin Thaney, Endowment Director
Wikimedia Foundation