"in an attempt to haul things into the modern age, in 2001 kevin kelly, co-founder of wired magazine, launched an enterprise called the all species foundation with the aim of finding and recording on a database every living organism. the cost of such an exercise has been estimated at anywhere from £1.3 billion to as much as £30 billion. as of the spring of 2002, the foundation had just £750,000 in funds and four full-time employees." – bill bryson, "a short history of nearly everything", p. 442.

what about actually doing something with the money? get a wiki (or: get the wikimedia wiki) and call for entries. set the four out on quality assurance and let's see how far you'll get.

oops... the wikimedia empire somebody already got the clue: wikispecies.

btw. kelly has a neat collection of cool tools on his site.