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Until now Wikimedia has been operating on a limited budget according to Sue Gardner, executive director of the Foundation, but the donation from the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation will help the group to increase the quality of material on Wikipedia.

"Wikipedia and its sister projects have an enormous global impact, but the organisation behind them has been operating on a shoestring: unable to pursue partnerships, execute projects, or even to effectively fundraise. This institutional support from Sloan will enable us to make progress on some key goals: increasing quality, broadening participation, and distributing free knowledge to people without Internet connectivity," says Gardner.

The money will be donated over a period of three years, in three payments of $1 million, and used to fund the organisation and promotion of Wikipedia. Part of the money will be used

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to fund Wikipedia's "stable versions" feature, now called "flagged revisions", which allows experienced editors to grade the quality of existing articles.

The Wikipedia Academy will also benefit, receiving a higher budget with which to approach academics and other experts about contributing to articles.

Arthur P. Sloan Foundation

The Arthur P. Sloan Foundation was set up in 1934 by a previous General Motors CEO to fund research and education in science and technology. The group currently funds 118 fellowships in computer science, economics and the physical sciences and funds research into similar areas.

"We are delighted to support the Wikimedia Foundation and to help develop its organisational capacity and improve the quality of its flagship, Wikipedia," says Doron Weber, Sloan program director for Universal Access to Recorded Knowledge.

"As the largest encyclopaedia in human history and one of the top ten web sites in the world, Wikipedia represents a quantum leap in collecting human knowledge from diverse sources, organising it without commercial or other bias, and making it freely available to people everywhere."

Earlier this month it was claimed that Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales offered to edit articles in return for donations.

Computer scientist, Jeff Merkey, claimed that Wales had agreed to give him "special protection" in exchange for "a susbtantial donation" to the Wikimedia Foundation.