Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Exceeds Fundraising Target, But Continues Asking For More Money (theregister.co.uk)
Reader Andreas Kolbe writes: The fundraising banners on Wikipedia this year are so effective that halfway through its December fundraising campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation has already exceeded its $25 million donations target for the entire month, reports The Register. A few weeks ago, Jimmy Wales promised that the Wikimedia Foundation would "stop the fundraiser if enough money were raised in shorter than the planned time". But there's no sign of the Foundation doing that. When asked about this more recently, a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson remained non-committal on ending the campaign early. The most recent audited accounts of the Wikimedia Foundation showed net assets of $92 million and revenue of $82 million. None of this money, incidentally, pays for writing or checking Wikipedia content – that's the job of unpaid volunteers – and only $2 million are spent on internet hosting every year.
It isn't as if the people who create anything of value, i.e. the article writers, are paid. Can't Jimmy Wales pay for his own three martini lunches?
A professional admin team would largely eliminate many of the problems Wikipedia has with its various cabals.
So the internet's cesspit of ill researched unfounded disinformation is pissed that one of the most successful projects of the last decade in advancing human knowledge has a healthy monetary buffer?
I sense jealousy.
But fair play to The Register, I frankly thought it was dead already, they've done well to keep such a useless publication going even this long.
Hosting is not Wikipedia's largest expense. Salaries are. They spent $32 million on salaries. Total expenses were $67 million.
Even considering all of the expenses, their net income was positive $16 million last year.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
For the amount of good that this foundation does for the public, making information and truth more accessible, and policing the content in an open and rigorous way, I say let them collect as much donations as people willingly donate. It's hard enough to get people to donate -- who would refuse if the donations kept coming in.
Sure, be transparent and honest about when you've exceeded the goal for the month (or set the goal higher), but frankly, I don't understand why you would criticize when one of the most valuable services on the internet today attempts to build more of a financial cushion for itself (and not through lying or deception or serving up users / others' content for cash, how refreshing).
Learn to understand who are your friends and who are your enemies in this world, people.
Well if the summary is to be believed, they have 45x their yearly costs. That's a bit more than protection from swings in donations.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
During the year ended June 30, 2016, the Foundation entered into an agreement with the Tides Foundation to establish the Wikimedia Endowment as a Collective Action Fund to act as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to ensure a base level of support for the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. The Endowment is independent from the Foundation. On June 29, 2016, the Foundation provided an irrevocable grant in the amount of $5 million to the Tides Foundation for the purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment. The amount is recorded in awards and grants expense.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
Is this the math you used? $92M (net assets) / $2M (internet hosting) = 46x, then round down to 45x. I think "net assets" includes things that are not easily spent, like servers, and is not the same as "cash savings". I also suspect that "internet hosting" is not equal to "operating costs". Therefore, I really have no idea how far off your figure may be. (Not your fault--the summary lacks the details necessary to support its claims.)
A professional admin team would largely eliminate many of the problems Wikipedia has with its various cabals.
Yes it would. But a professional admin team would use up most of the money that is currently going to other people.
net assets of $92 million and revenue of $82 million. None of this money, incidentally, pays for writing or checking Wikipedia content – that's the job of unpaid volunteers – and only $2 million are spent on internet hosting every year.
Which is exactly why you should never give money to them.
So where does all of the money go??
200+ employees, who do nothing of value.
Expensive office space in San Francisco.
Giving away money in the form of "grants" which produce nothing of value.
$78.5 million of the $92 million of net assets are cash and short-term financial investments.
2016 Donations & Revenue (gross inflows)
$ 82 million
2016 Expenses (selected):
$ 32 million - Salaries
$ 11 million - Awards & Grants
$ 6 million - Professional Services
$ 4.8 million - Other Operating Expenses
$ 3.6 million - Donation Processing Expenses
$ 2.6 million - Travel, Conferences & Special Events
$ 2.0 million - Internet Hosting
2016 "Net Income" (increase in unrestricted net assets)
$ 15 million
See for yourself: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
WTF?
Why does Wikipedia need any "marketing" at all? Anyone who knows anything about the internet has heard of Wikipedia by now. This is like claiming that Google needs marketing for their search engine. If you haven't heard of Google Search or Wikipedia by now, no amount of marketing is going to help; you're probably not even using the internet.
I don't see how it's unrealistic to expect an extremely well-established charity organization to concentrate its efforts on its core mission and not a bunch of unnecessary BS like marketing.
Wikipedia's fundraising activities seem to get more obnoxious every year. This year I got a nasty-gram from "Jimmy Wales" asking why I haven't given my annual donation yet.
I already did, dumb ass, but I submitted it from a different e-mail address this year. But, hey... if you're going to give me an attitude about it, I certainly won't bother donating next year.
$32M in SALARIES? to who?
It's the Jimmy Wales Junket Fund. Compare the cost structure for an Adam Sandler movie - quite similar.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Just add this line to the block list of your favorite ad blocker (uBlock origin, ABP, ...)
wikipedia.org###centralNotice
It is not included by default because EasyList doesn't consider self-promotion to be advertisement. I do.
$32M in SALARIES? to who?
Last time I heard, Wikipedia had about 200 employees (over 100 technical positions), and that figure may or may not have included people working for the wikimedia foundation. If not, that averages to about $160k each.
John
These comments are so full of ignorance it's not even funny—I thought I had wandered into /r/the_donald or something. The few sensible people posting have pointed out that there seems to be an extreme lack of transparency, and no one is quite sure where all the money is going. This is a fair point and needs to be addressed by the Wikimedia Foundation. This does *not* automatically mean that they are somehow wasting this money, giving its employees lavish salaries, or anything of the sort. It means we do not know. No amount of ridiculous theorising will change that. We need to be able to trust our non-profit organizations in general, and such a great, important organization like Wikimedia in particular. Just because we don't know something doesn't make them this evil villain. If we uncover some impropriety, *then* we can demonize them. Until then, I'm making a (small) donation and also demanding more transparency. I encourage others to do the same.