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Study Reveals Wikimedia Foundation Is 'Awash In Money'
New submitter Harold Dumbacher writes: Few things seen on Wikipedia aggravate its users more than the annual fundraising banners. Yet millions of people continue to contribute, seeming to think that Wikipedia will "go offline" if they aren't given more donations. Yet as a new Wikipediocracy blog post reveals, the Wikimedia Foundation is rolling in dough — $53 million in net assets as of this year (that's actual hard sitting-around currency, currently put into various investment vehicles). Meanwhile it only costs about $2.5 million to actually keep Wikimedia project servers online and handling user traffic. The rest of the WMF's annual donations go for "staff salaries, travel and miscellaneous." And evidently, many people are growing disgruntled with this ongoing state of affairs, even Wikimedia staff who benefit from it.
Wait, so is this liquid cash or invested money? This is a rather important distinction since non-profits often depend heavily on interest from investments as their primary stable source of income. So if this is the later case, it sounds like responsible stewardship, at least that piece of it since I gather the amature nature of administration shows through in other areas.
Like this? http://wikimediafoundation.org...
There are things to dislike in the report, but I don't get the "new Wikipediocracy blog post (study) reveals" breathlessness. It's an annual nonprofit report - read it. You might also be surprised to know that other major charities usually have a bunch of their own dirty laundry. Take the American Cancer Society: of the $890M it takes in, it only passes on about $680M, and it even has to worry about an employee pension system. http://www.cancer.org/acs/grou...
If any particular charity's overhead bugs you...go find another charity, or start your own. There will never be shortage of needs.
Sorry but 53 million in assets for foundation with that level of operating costs that is rising every year is hardly awash in money. Harvard has a 36 billion dollar endowment, that's an example of an organization awash in money.
Just look at some university presidents and their absolutely spartan lifestyles due to working for non-profits, such as multimillion dollar homes purchased for them by the university.
While there's definitely some largess going on at many universities these days, those multimillion dollar homes are not purchased for presidents by the universities. They're owned by the universities, and the presidents are allowed to live there as long as they're president. It's free housing. When the president gets another job or retires, he has to leave the mansion and go find himself another place to live, so that the new president can live in the mansion.
Are you going to complain about the President of the US getting to live in the White House for free too?