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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.
I'd suggest that the folks who are outraged by this start their own wiki, run with all volunteers, and pass the hat among themselves so that the servers can be fed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Even if they are sitting on money and over-expend it, all their content is Creative Commons, anybody can "Fork Wikipedia". The contribution to Wikipedia to the present days is still there and it is huge. It will be desirable that the extra money will be expended to enrich the content and not waste it, but if we compare how politicians use money today, I prefer that it is being waste on a collaborative open project. I really hope that the same thing happens to Archive.org someday, that they will be able to sit on money to improve the "library".
Read the article. $20 million is spent on salaries (for staff that produce nothing -- they didn't produce the content) and they only were able to obtain 1% gain from investments. Doesn't sound like responsible stewardship.
I want to know where every dollar is spent, or I'm donating 0$, like I have done. Seems to be working fine for them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
While it's possible that this is the case, I believe the objection here may be to the way that Wikipedia is advertising its fundraising drives.
It's one thing to say "Please donate to us so we can have a suitable sustainable endowment to keep this website running forever" and it's a different thing to say "Please donate now, or this site might go down imminently because we can't pay our bills."
According to an older story at Wikipediocracy, the objections seem to be partly that fundraising campaigns are expressed in a dire "We need money now or the lights go off!" kind of tone, when that really isn't the situation.
The first goal of raising an endowment is certainly a laudable one for any sustainable non-profit. The question is whether they're being honest with their donors about what their situation is and what they are going to do with the money.
Yes, for a non-profit 50 million $ just laying around seems like a lot. The WMF page says there are 230 employees for a revenue of 38 million $ (mostly from donations). You can hardly claim they are being secret about it. Also, paying 230 ppl an avg of 50,000$ a year is already 11 million$ ( so it's not a trivial amount, and if the avg is higher that goes up by a margin as well).
However, when you look at the presence of WikiPedia on the internet, it's basically first hit on google in every search on every possible subject. It's probably the number one source for people to find information about a subject. They have a HUGE presence. If someone had to put a value on that, it would be worth billions. Look at other internet companies. Google (365 billion $), facebook (200 billion $), etc... Sure, they are not Google or Facebook, but would definitely be valued in the billions. The 50 million $ is just change compared to their net worth.
Safe return on $53 million at the moment is around $1 million per year. I'm not sure what their staffing costs are, but if the servers cost $2.5 million per year, it makes sense that they'd continue to fundraise.
Sorry, but every time I've ever contributed to Wikipedia, my articles are either marked as not meeting Notability criteria, or my edits are reverted by some 14 year old, so he/she can re-implement the same edits in their own wording.
Since I've had so many terrible experiences with Wikipedia, I refuse to donate my time or money.
The anger comes from the lies Wikipedia posts at the top of articles over and over claiming wikipedia is on the verge of bankruptcy. Some donated simply because they felt pressured (as if they didn't do something, wikipedia would go offline). Some may have had to stretch and put themselves in a less financially good situation (but likely not horrible). Yet, it seems it was rich people's charity all along.
We don't give a damn if they have some money. But when they constantly have their ad campaign which says "yarg, donate now or we'll have to close and go dark", and in fact they're sitting on pile of money ... well, then we think we've been had.
This isn't a few bucks for a rainy day ... this is years worth of operating costs.
So their goodwill and reputation could get a hard yank as people say "fuck you you greedy bastards".
Because people don't like being constantly told to donate or we go bust by organizations which are nowhere near that -- it smacks of self entitled assholes lying to their donors to make something sound far more urgent that it really is.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If any particular charity's overhead bugs you...go find another charity, or start your own. There will never be shortage of needs.
Or share the information with others to raise awareness so they don't spend their money where it won't help. Like this story.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They have annual expenses of roughly $23 million (do you go to work for free every day?), not just the $2.5 they spend to physically keep the lights on. That makes their current position comfortable but still not self-sustaining.
Realistically, they need 13+ times that much in investments to have a self-sustaining income stream.
$20M on salaries sounds about right for an organization with a complex IT infrastructure and global reach. Not sure what the outrage is here, unless you're expecting the people that keep the site up to work for free.
If they were developing the content as well, I'd expect their salaries to be in the $30-50M range. $1M probably gives you 6-8 editorial FTEs, so $30-50M would give you the few hundred editors and their support staff necessary to produce the content. The numbers are different for IT staff - 4-5 FTEs/$1M, so $20M could cover 80 technical staff and a few managers. Of course, there's all other staff as well, so the technical staff numbers are probably lower.
Other posts have already pointed out that $50M in the bank is a smart move for a non-profit.
-Chris