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The Wikimedia Foundation just emailed ReadWriteWeb to announce receipt of $500,000 in grant funding from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The grant is a part of a $100 million dollar program to fund open education resources, and given Wikimedia’s mission to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, the Hewlett Foundation couldn’t have chosen a better org.

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Wikimedia has contributed to open education in a number of ways including by providing full courses and textbooks through Wikiversity and Wikibooks and a number of learning resources and commons material through Wikisource and Wikicommons.

Three days ago the organization celebrated Wikipedia’s 3 millionth English article and 2 days ago it launched its official iPhone app. In a week of landmark announcements, the company has managed to charm the Hewlett Foundation and kick start its strategic planning process.

“The Hewlett Foundation’s support comes at a critical time,” said Wikimedia Foundation’s Executive Director Sue Gardner, “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.”

In true crowd sourced Wikimedia fashion, the organization launched a public wiki for community strategic planning. To add your input in how the community is shaped in the next 5 years, visit the Call for Proposals page.

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