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Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation

January 08, 2023

"Wikimedia" redirects here. Not to be confused with MediaWiki.

Coordinates: 37°47′21″N 122°24′12″W / 37.78917°N 122.40333°W / 37.78917; -122.40333

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws.[5] Best known as the hosting platform for Wikipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia, it also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki, a wiki software.[6][7][8]

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
AbbreviationWMF
FoundedJune 20, 2003; 19 years ago (2003-06-20), St. Petersburg, Florida, US
FounderJimmy Wales[1]
Type501(c)(3), charitable organization
EIN 200049703[2]
FocusFree, open-content, multilingual, wiki-based Internet projects
Location
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsWikipedia, MediaWiki, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary
Membership
Board-only
Chief Executive Officer
Maryana Iskander
Revenue
[3]
Expenses
  • US$146.0 million (2022)
  • US$111.8 million (2021)
[3]
Endowment (2021)> US$100 million (2021)[4]
Employees
> around 700 staff/contractors (as of November 2022)
Website
  • Official website
  • foundation.wikimedia.org (Governance)

The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida, by Jimmy Wales as a nonprofit way to fund Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other crowdsourced wiki projects that had until then been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company.[1] The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from Wikipedia readers, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects.[9] These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise.

The Foundation has grown rapidly throughout its existence. By 2022, it employed around 700 staff and contractors, with annual revenues of US$155 million, annual expenses of US$146 million, net assets of US$240 million and a growing endowment, which surpassed US$100 million in June 2021.

Mission

The Wikimedia Foundation's mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."[10]

To serve this mission, the Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki content in multiple languages.[10] The Foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the wikis itself.[11] It collaborates with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups and other partners in different countries all over the world, and promises in its mission statement to make useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge in perpetuity.[10] It also engages in political advocacy.[12] The Foundation's strategic direction, formulated in 2017, envisages that it "will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" by 2030.[13]

History

Further information: History of Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia in 2001 as a feeder project to supplement Nupedia. The project was originally funded by Bomis, Wales's for-profit business, and edited by a rapidly growing community of volunteer editors. The early community discussed a variety of ways to support the ongoing costs of upkeep, and was broadly opposed to running ads on the site,[14] so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence.[15] That also addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto trademarks for the project.

The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media, was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Wikipedia mailing list in March 2003,[16] three months after Wiktionary became the second wiki-based project hosted on the original server. The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in Florida on June 20, 2003.[1][17] A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003.[18] The Foundation was granted section 501(c)(3) status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Code as a public charity in 2005, making donations to the Foundation tax-deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.[19] Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code is B60 (Adult, Continuing education).[20][21]

The Foundation applied to trademark the name Wikipedia in the US on September 14, 2004. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16, 2004, and by the European Union on January 20, 2005. Subsets of Wikipedia were already being distributed in book and DVD form, and there were discussions about licensing the logo and wordmark.[22]

On December 11, 2006, the Foundation's board noted that it could not become a membership organization, as initially planned but not implemented, due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida statutory law. The bylaws were accordingly amended to remove all references to membership rights and activities.[23]

In 2007, the Foundation decided to move its headquarters from Florida to the San Francisco Bay Area. Considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners, a better talent pool, as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel.[24][25][26] The move was completed by January 31, 2008, into a headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco.[27] It later moved to New Montgomery Street, and then to One Montgomery Tower.[28]

On October 25, 2021, the Foundation launched Wikimedia Enterprise, a commercial Wikimedia content delivery service aimed at groups that want to use high-volume APIs, starting with Big Tech enterprises.[29][30] In June 2022, Google and the Internet Archive were announced as the service's first customers, though only Google will pay for the service.[31] The same announcement noted a shifting focus towards smaller companies with similar data needs, supporting the service through "a lot paying a little".

Projects and initiatives

Wikimedia projects

For the complete list, see wmf:Special:SiteMatrix and m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects.
 
Logos of 15 Wikimedia sister projects

Content on most Wikimedia project websites is licensed for redistribution under v3.0 of the Attribution and Share-alike Creative Commons licenses. The Foundation owns and operates 11 wikis that are written, curated, designed, and governed by their communities of volunteer editors. Any member of the public is welcomed to contribute; registering a named user account is optional. These wikis follow a free content model, with the stated goal of disseminating knowledge to the world. They include, by launch date:

Certain additional projects provide infrastructure or coordination of the free knowledge projects. These include:

  • Meta-Wiki – central site for coordinating all projects and the Wikimedia community
  • Wikimedia Incubator – a single wiki for drafting the core pages of new language-editions in development
  • MediaWiki – site for coordinating work on MediaWiki software
  • Wikitech – including Wikimedia Cloud Services, Data Services, Toolforge, and other technical projects and infrastructure
  • Phabricator – not a wiki, but a global ticketing system for tracking issues and feature requests

Affiliates

Further information: Wikimedia movement and List of Wikimedia chapters

Wikimedia affiliates are independent and formally recognized groups of people working together to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia Foundation recognizes three types of affiliates: chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups. Affiliates organize and engage in activities to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement, such as regional conferences, outreach, edit-a-thons, hackathons, public relations, public policy advocacy, GLAM engagement, and Wikimania.[32][33][34] While many of these things are also done by individual contributors or less formal groups, they are not referred to as affiliates.

Recognition of chapters and thematic organizations, which must be incorporated non-profits, is approved by the Foundation's board on the recommendation of an Affiliations Committee composed of Wikimedia community members. The Affiliations Committee directly approves the recognition of unincorporated user groups. Affiliates are formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, but are independent of it, with no legal control of or responsibility for Wikimedia projects and their content.[33][34][35]

The Foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004.[36] In 2012, the Foundation approved, finalized and adopted the thematic organization and user group recognition models. An additional model for movement partners, was also approved, but as of May 19, 2022 has not yet been finalized or adopted.[34][37]

Wikimania

Main article: Wikimania

Wikimania is an annual global conference for Wikimedians and Wikipedians, started in 2005. The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2005. Wikimania is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter, with support from local institutions (such as a library or university) and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires,[38] Cambridge,[39] Haifa,[40] Hong Kong,[41] Taipei, London,[42] Mexico City,[43] Esino Lario, Italy,[44] Montreal, Cape Town, and Stockholm. The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations. In 2023 it is scheduled to be held in Singapore.

Technology

The Wikimedia Foundation maintains the hardware that runs its projects in its own servers. It also maintains the MediaWiki platform and many other software libraries that run its projects.

Hardware

See also: Wikipedia § Hardware operations and support
 
Overview of system architecture, April 2020. See server layout diagrams on Meta-Wiki.
 
Wikimedia Foundation servers

Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004 when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture.[45] Server downtime in 2003 led to the first fundraising drive.

By December 2009, Wikimedia ran on co-located servers, with 300 servers in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam.[46] In 2008, it also switched from multiple different Linux operating system vendors to Ubuntu Linux.[47][48] In 2019, it switched to Debian.[49]

By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia, citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer hurricanes".[50][51] In years prior, the hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress.[52]

In October 2013, Wikimedia Foundation started looking for a second facility that would be used side by side with the main facility in Ashburn, citing reasons of redundancy (e.g. emergency fallback) and to prepare for simultaneous multi-datacentre service.[53][54] This followed a year in which a fiber cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012.[55][56]

Apart from the second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014,[57][58] the number of servers needed to run the infrastructure in a single facility has been mostly stable since 2009. As of November 2015, the main facility in Ashburn hosts 520 servers in total which includes servers for newer services besides Wikimedia project wikis, such as cloud services (Toolforge)[59][60] and various services for metrics, monitoring, and other system administration.[61]

In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation deployed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore, the first of its kind in Asia.[62]

Software

The operation of Wikimedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open-source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MariaDB database since 2013;[63] previously the MySQL database was used.[64] The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects.

Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker.

Some MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005, an Apache Lucene extension[65][66] was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene and later switched to CirrusSearch which is based on Elasticsearch for searching.[67] The Wikimedia Foundation also uses CiviCRM[68] and WordPress.[69]

The Foundation published official Wikipedia mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and in March 2015, the apps were updated to include mobile user-friendly features.[70]

Finances

 
Wikimedia Foundation revenue (in US$), 2003–2022
Black: Net assets (excluding the Endowment)
Green: Revenue (excluding direct donations to the Endowment)
Red: Expenses (including WMF payments into the Endowment)[71]

The Wikimedia Foundation mainly finances itself through donations from the public, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia, as well as grants from various tech companies and philanthropic organizations.[9][72] Campaigns for the Wikimedia Endowment have included emails asking donors to leave Wikimedia money in their will.[73]

As a 501c3 charity, the Foundation is exempt from federal and state income tax.[74][75] It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.[72] In 2007, 2008 and 2009, Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of four out of four possible stars,[76] increased from three to four stars in 2010.[77] As of January 2020, the rating was still four stars (overall score 98.14 out of 100), based on data from FY2018.[78]

The Foundation also increases its revenue by federal grants, sponsorship, services and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, was a source of revenue for a number of years.[79][80] DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge.[81] An expanded version of data feeds and content services was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise, an LLC subsidiary of the Foundation.[82]

In July 2014, the Foundation announced it would accept Bitcoin donations.[83] In 2021, cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0.08% of all donations[84][85] and on May 1, 2022, the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a Wikimedia community vote.[85][86]

The Foundation's net assets grew from an initial US$57,000 at the end of its first fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004,[87] to US$53.5 million in mid-2014[88][89] and US$231 million (plus a US$100 million endowment) by the end of June 2021; that year, the Foundation also announced plans to launch Wikimedia Enterprise, to let large people pay by volume for high-volume access to otherwise rate-limited APIs.[90]

In 2020, the Foundation donated US$4.5 million to Tides Advocacy to create a "Knowledge Equity Fund", to provide grants to organizations whose work would not otherwise be covered by Wikimedia grants but addresses racial inequities in accessing and contributing to free knowledge resources.[91][92]

Wikimedia Endowment

In January 2016, the Foundation announced the creation of an endowment to safeguard its future.[93] The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation, with a stated goal to raise US$100 million in the next 10 years.[94] Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving US$1 million.[95] Peter Baldwin and his wife, Lisbet Rausing, donated US$5 million to it in 2017.[96]

In 2018, major donations to the endowment were received from Amazon and Facebook (US$1 million each) and George Soros (US$2 million).[97][98][99] In 2019, donations included US$2 million from Google,[100] US$3.5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing,[96] US$2.5 million more from Newmark,[101] and another US$1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020.[102][103]

As of 2022, the advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales, Peter Baldwin, former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and Phoebe Ayers, former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation, investor Annette Campbell-White, businessman Niels Christian Nielsen, and venture capitalist Michael Kim.

The Foundation itself has provided annual grants of $5 million to its Endowment since 2016.[104] These amounts have been recorded as part of the Foundation's "awards and grants" expenses.[105] In September 2021, the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $100 million fundraising goal in June 2021, five years ahead of its initial target.[4]

Financial development

The Foundation summarizes its assets in the "Statements of Activities" in its audited reports. These do not include funds in the Wikimedia Endowment, however expenses from the 2015–16 financial year onward include payments to the Wikimedia Endowment.[106]

Year Source Revenue Expenses Asset rise Net assets at
end of year
2021/2022 PDF $154,686,521 $145,970,915 $8,173,996 $239,351,532
2020/2021 PDF $162,886,686 $111,839,819 $50,861,811 $231,177,536
2019/2020 PDF $129,234,327 $112,489,397 $14,674,300 $180,315,725
2018/2019 PDF $120,067,266 $91,414,010 $30,691,855 $165,641,425
2017/2018 PDF $104,505,783 $81,442,265 $21,619,373 $134,949,570
2016/2017 PDF $91,242,418 $69,136,758 $21,547,402 $113,330,197
2015/2016 PDF $81,862,724 $65,947,465 $13,962,497 $91,782,795
2014/2015 PDF $75,797,223 $52,596,782 $24,345,277 $77,820,298
2013/2014 PDF $52,465,287 $45,900,745 $8,285,897 $53,475,021
2012/2013 PDF $48,635,408 $35,704,796 $10,260,066 $45,189,124
2011/2012 PDF $38,479,665 $29,260,652 $10,736,914 $34,929,058
2010/2011 PDF $24,785,092 $17,889,794 $9,649,413 $24,192,144
2009/2010 PDF $17,979,312 $10,266,793 $6,310,964 $14,542,731
2008/2009 PDF $8,658,006 $5,617,236 $3,053,599 $8,231,767
2007/2008 PDF $5,032,981 $3,540,724 $3,519,886 $5,178,168
2006/2007 PDF $2,734,909 $2,077,843 $654,066 $1,658,282
2005/2006 PDF $1,508,039 $791,907 $736,132 $1,004,216
2004/2005 PDF $379,088 $177,670 $211,418 $268,084
2003/2004 PDF $80,129 $23,463 $56,666 $56,666

Expenses

A plurality of Wikimedia Foundation expenses are salaries and wages, followed by community and affiliate grants, contributions to the endowment, and other professional operating expenses and services.[107][71]

Wikimedia Foundation expenses 2004–2020
  •  

    Wikimedia Foundation's expenses evolution by rubrics in USD

  •  

    Wikimedia Foundation's expenses as a percentage of the whole

Grants

 
Wikimedia Foundation and chapters finance meeting 2012, Paris

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history. In 2008, the Foundation received a US$40,000 grant from the Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Wikipedia.[108] It also received a US$262,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to purchase hardware,[109] a US$500,000 unrestricted grant from Vinod and Neeru Khosla,[110] who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board,[111] and US$177,376 from the historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin (Arcadia Fund), among others.[109] In March 2008, the Foundation announced what was then its largest donation yet: a three-year, US$3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation.[112]

In 2009, the Foundation received four grants. The first was a US$890,000 Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first-time authors of Wikipedia.[113] The second was a US$300,000 Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for Wikimedia Commons, to improve the interface for uploading multimedia files.[114] In August 2009, the Foundation received a US$500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.[115] Also in August 2009, the Omidyar Network committed up to US$2 million over two years to Wikimedia.[116]

In 2010, Google donated US$2 million[117] and the Stanton Foundation granted $1.2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program for what later became the Wikipedia Education Program (and the spin-off Wiki Education Foundation).[118][119][120]

In March 2011, the Sloan Foundation authorized another US$3 million grant, to be funded over three years, with the first US$1 million to come in July 2011 and the remaining US$2 million to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. As a donor, Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.[121] In August 2011, the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a US$3.6 million grant of which US$1.8 million was funded and the remainder was to come in September 2012. As of 2011, this was the largest grant the Wikimedia Foundation had ever received.[122] In November 2011, the Foundation received a US$500,000 donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation.[123][124]

In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of US$1.25 million from Lisbet Rausing[123] and Peter Baldwin through the Charities Aid Foundation, scheduled to be funded in five equal installments from 2012 through 2015. In 2014, the Foundation received the largest single gift in its history, a $5 million unrestricted donation from an anonymous donor supporting $1 million worth of expenses annually for the next five years.[125] In March 2012, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, established by the Intel co-founder and his wife, awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a US$449,636 grant to develop Wikidata.[126] This was part of a larger grant, much of which went to Wikimedia Germany, which took on ownership of the development effort.[127]

Between 2014 and 2015, the Foundation received US$500,000 from the Monarch Fund, US$100,000 from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to support the Wikipedia Zero initiative.[128][129][130]

In 2015, a grant agreement was reached with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a search engine called the "Knowledge Engine", a project that proved controversial.[131][132] In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded another US$3 million grant for a three-year period,[121] and Google donated another $1.1 million to the Foundation in 2019.[133]

The following have donated US$500,000 or more each (2008–2019, not including gifts to the Wikimedia Endowment; list may be incomplete):

Total
(US$000s) 		Donor Years
9,000 Sloan Foundation
  • 2008–2013
  • 2017–2019
5,952 Stanton Foundation 2009–2012
5,000 (anonymous) 2014–2018
3,100 Google 2010, 2019
2,000 Omidyar Network 2009–2010
1,527 Rausing, Baldwin
via Arcadia, Charities Aid
  • 2008
  • 2012–2015
1,300 Hewlett 2009–2010
500 Sergey Brin & Anne Wojcicki 2010
500 Monarch Fund 2014–2015

Staff

History

 
Foundation staff in January 2019

In 2004, the Foundation appointed Tim Starling as developer liaison to help improve the MediaWiki software, Daniel Mayer as chief financial officer (finance, budgeting, and coordination of fund drives), and Erik Möller as content partnership coordinator. In May 2005, the Foundation announced seven more official appointments.[134]

In January 2006, the Foundation created a number of committees, including the Communication Committee, in an attempt to further organize activities somewhat handled by volunteers at that time.[135] Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program.

As of October 4, 2006, the Foundation had five paid employees:[136] two programmers, an administrative assistant, a coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim executive director,[137] Brad Patrick, previously the Foundation's general counsel. Patrick ceased his activity as interim director in January 2007 and then resigned from his position as legal counsel, effective April 1, 2007. He was replaced by Mike Godwin who served as general counsel and legal coordinator from July 2007[138] to 2010.

In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez joined as head of communications.[139] Doran began working as a part-time bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a temporary agency. Doran, found to have had a criminal record,[140] left the Foundation in July 2007 and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor; she became the executive director in December 2007.[141] Florence Devouard cited Doran's departure from the organization as one of the reasons the Foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.[142]

 
Exterior view of the previous Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters at New Montgomery St in 2014

Danny Wool, officially the grant coordinator and also involved in fundraising and business development, resigned in March 2007. He accused Wales of misusing the Foundation's funds for recreational purposes and said that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.[143] In February 2007, the Foundation added a position, chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard,[144] who had been occupying the position as a volunteer since August 2005. Cary Bass was hired in March 2007 in the position of volunteer coordinator. In January 2008, the Foundation appointed Veronique Kessler as the new chief financial and operating officer, Kul Wadhwa as head of business development and Jay Walsh as head of communications.

In March 2013, Gardner announced she would be leaving her position at the Foundation.[145] Lila Tretikov was appointed executive director in May 2014;[146][147] she resigned in March 2016. Former chief communications officer Katherine Maher was appointed the interim executive director, a position made permanent in June 2016.[148] Maher served as executive director until April 2021.[149][150]

Present department structure

 
One Montgomery Tower, the building where the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters have been located since 2017

As of October 2, 2021, there were around 700 people working at the Foundation.[151] Maryana Iskander was named the incoming CEO in September 2021, and took over that role in January 2022.[152]

As of July 2022, the WMF has the following department structure:[153]

  • Advancement: responsible for fundraising, strategic partnerships, and grantmaking programs.
  • Communications: responsible for Wikimedia brand development, marketing, social media, public relations, and global awareness efforts.
  • Finance and Administration: responsible for ensuring responsible management of Wikimedia Foundation funds and resources.
  • Legal: responsible for mounting opposition to government surveillance and censorship, defending volunteer communities, facilitating policy discussions, and advocating for privacy.
  • Product: responsible for building collaborative tools for knowledge sharing, user research, experience design and cross-device support including mobile apps and voice technology.
  • Talent and Culture: responsible for recruitment and training.
  • Technology: responsible for maintaining and developing the technology platform underpinning the Wikimedia projects, in collaboration with thousands of volunteer developers.

Board of Trustees

The Foundation's board of trustees supervises the activities of the Foundation. The founding board had three members, to which two community-elected trustees were added. Starting in 2008 it was composed of ten members:

  • three selected by the community encompassed by all the different Wikimedia projects;
  • two selected by Wikimedia chapters;
  • four appointed by the board itself; and
  • one founder's seat, reserved for Jimmy Wales.[154][155]

Over time, the size of the board and details of the selection processes have evolved. As of 2020, the board may have up to 16 trustees:[156]

  • eight seats sourced from the wider Wikimedia community (affiliates and volunteer community);
  • seven appointed by the board itself; and
  • one founder's seat reserved for Wales.

As of October 2021, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Nataliia Tymkiv, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Victoria Doronina, and Lorenzo Losa);[157] four Board-appointed trustees (McKinsey & Company director Raju Narisetti,[158] Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei,[159] management consulting executive Lisa Lewin, and McAfee executive Tanya Capuano); and Wales.[155] Tymkiv chairs the board, with Al Shafei and Sigalov as vice chairs.[160]

In 2015, James Heilman, a trustee recently elected to the board by the community,[161] was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board.[162][163] This decision generated dispute among members of the Wikipedia community.[164][165] Heilman later said that he "was given the option of resigning [by the Board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such a move as letting down those who elected me."[166] He subsequently added that while on the Board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's Knowledge Engine project and its financing,[167] and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal.[168] Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017.[169]

In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri joined the board before stepping down amid community controversy about a "no poach" agreement he executed when at Google, which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US$415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees.[170][171]

Independent contractors

Among firms regularly listed as independent contractors in the Wikimedia Foundation's Form 990 disclosures are the law firm Jones Day and the PR firm Minassian Media; the latter was founded by Craig Minassian, a full-time executive at the Clinton Foundation.[172]

Disputes

See also: Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation
 
Wikimedia Foundation post-SOPA party, 2012

A number of disputes have resulted in litigation[173][174][175][176] while others have not.[177] Attorney Matt Zimmerman has said, "Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created encyclopedia content."[178]

In December 2011, the Foundation hired Washington, D.C., lobbyist Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC to lobby Congress.[179] At the time of the hire, the Foundation was concerned about a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act.[180] The communities were as well, organizing some of the most visible protest against the bill on the Internet alongside other popular websites.

In October 2013, a German court ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation can be held liable for content added to Wikipedia when there has been a specific complaint; otherwise, the Wikimedia Foundation does not check the content Wikipedia publishes and has no duty to do so.[181]

In June 2014, Bildkonst Upphovsrätt i Sverige filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikimedia Sweden.[182]

On June 20, 2014, a defamation lawsuit (Law Division civil case No. L-1400-14) involving Wikipedia editors was filed with the Mercer County Superior Court in New Jersey seeking, inter alia, compensatory and punitive damages.[183][184]

In a March 10, 2015, op-ed for The New York Times, Wales and Tretikov announced the Foundation was filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency and five other government agencies and officials, including DOJ, calling into question its practice of mass surveillance, which they argued infringed the constitutional rights of the Foundation's readers, editors and staff. They were joined in the suit by eight additional plaintiffs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.[185][186][187] On October 23, 2015, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed the suit Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA on grounds of standing. U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III ruled that the plaintiffs could not plausibly prove they were subject to upstream surveillance, and that their argument is "riddled with assumptions", "speculations" and "mathematical gymnastics".[188][189] The plaintiffs filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on February 17, 2016.[190]

In September 2020, WMF's application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked after objections from the government of China[191] over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan.[192] In October 2021, WMF's second application was blocked by the government of China for the same reason.[193] In May 2022, six Wikimedia movement affiliate chapters were blocked from being accredited to WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) by China, claiming that the chapters were spreading disinformation.[194] In July 2022, China blocked an application by seven Wikimedia chapters to be accredited as permanent observers to WIPO;[195] China's position was supported by a number of other countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.[196]

Excessive spending and fundraising

In 2014, Jimmy Wales was confronted with allegations that WMF had a poor cost/benefit ratio for "a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works". He acknowledged that he had "been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch show-stopping bugs".[197]

During the 2015 fundraising campaign, some members of the community voiced their concerns about the fundraising banners. They argued that they were obtrusive and could deceive potential donors by giving the impression that Wikipedia had immediate financial problems, which was not true. The Wikimedia Foundation vowed to improve wording on further fundraising campaigns to avoid these issues.[198]

In February 2017, an op-ed published by The Signpost, the English Wikipedia's online newspaper, titled "Wikipedia has Cancer",[199][200] produced a debate in both the Wikipedian community and the wider public. The author criticized the Wikimedia Foundation for its ever-increasing annual spending, which, he argued, could put the project at financial risk should an unexpected event happen. The author proposed to cap spending, build up the endowment, and restructure the endowment so that WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad.[201]

Knowledge Engine project

Main article: Knowledge Engine (Wikimedia Foundation)

Knowledge Engine was a search engine project initiated in 2015 by WMF to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information on the Internet.[202] The KE's goal was to be less reliant on traditional search engines. It was funded with a US$250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation.[203] Some perceived the project as a scandal, mainly because it was conceived in secrecy, and the project proposal was even a surprise to some staff, in contrast with a general culture of transparency in the organization and on the projects. Some of the information available to the community was received through leaked documents published by The Signpost in 2016.[204][202] Following this dispute, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov resigned.[205][206][207]

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External links

  • Official website (wikimediafoundation.org)
  • Wikimedia site navigation (wikimedia.org)

Organization

  • Wikimedia Foundation 2022–23 Annual Plan (draft)
  • Wikimedia Foundation annual reports
  • Wikimedia Foundation bylaws
  • Wikimedia Foundation social media profiles: Twitter, YouTube

Financials

Charity status

Community

  • Wikimedia mailing list archives
  • Global community site for the Wikimedia Foundation's projects (meta.wikimedia.org)

January 08, 2023
wikimedia, foundation, wikimedia, redirects, here, confused, with, mediawiki, coordinates, 78917, 40333, 78917, 40333, wikimedia, short, abbreviated, american, nonprofit, organization, headquartered, francisco, california, registered, charitable, foundation, u. Wikimedia redirects here Not to be confused with MediaWiki Coordinates 37 47 21 N 122 24 12 W 37 78917 N 122 40333 W 37 78917 122 40333 The Wikimedia Foundation Inc or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF is an American 501 c 3 nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws 5 Best known as the hosting platform for Wikipedia a crowdsourced online encyclopedia it also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki a wiki software 6 7 8 Wikimedia Foundation Inc AbbreviationWMFFoundedJune 20 2003 19 years ago 2003 06 20 St Petersburg Florida USFounderJimmy Wales 1 Type501 c 3 charitable organizationTax ID no EIN 200049703 2 FocusFree open content multilingual wiki based Internet projectsLocationSan Francisco California USArea servedWorldwideProductsWikipedia MediaWiki Wikibooks Wikidata Wikimedia Commons Wikinews Wikiquote Wikisource Wikispecies Wikiversity Wikivoyage WiktionaryMembershipBoard onlyChief Executive OfficerMaryana IskanderRevenueUS 154 7 million 2022 US 162 9 million 2021 3 ExpensesUS 146 0 million 2022 US 111 8 million 2021 3 Endowment 2021 gt US 100 million 2021 4 Employees gt around 700 staff contractors as of November 2022 update WebsiteOfficial websitefoundation wbr wikimedia wbr org Governance The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in St Petersburg Florida by Jimmy Wales as a nonprofit way to fund Wikipedia Wiktionary and other crowdsourced wiki projects that had until then been hosted by Bomis Wales s for profit company 1 The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from Wikipedia readers collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects 9 These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies and starting in 2022 by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise The Foundation has grown rapidly throughout its existence By 2022 it employed around 700 staff and contractors with annual revenues of US 155 million annual expenses of US 146 million net assets of US 240 million and a growing endowment which surpassed US 100 million in June 2021 Contents 1 Mission 2 History 3 Projects and initiatives 3 1 Wikimedia projects 3 2 Affiliates 3 3 Wikimania 4 Technology 4 1 Hardware 4 2 Software 5 Finances 5 1 Wikimedia Endowment 5 2 Financial development 5 3 Expenses 5 4 Grants 6 Staff 6 1 History 6 2 Present department structure 6 3 Board of Trustees 7 Independent contractors 8 Disputes 8 1 Excessive spending and fundraising 8 2 Knowledge Engine project 9 References 10 External links 10 1 Organization 10 2 Financials 10 3 Charity status 10 4 CommunityMissionThe Wikimedia Foundation s mission is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain and to disseminate it effectively and globally 10 To serve this mission the Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki content in multiple languages 10 The Foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the wikis itself 11 It collaborates with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations such as Wikimedia chapters thematic organizations user groups and other partners in different countries all over the world and promises in its mission statement to make useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge in perpetuity 10 It also engages in political advocacy 12 The Foundation s strategic direction formulated in 2017 envisages that it will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge by 2030 13 HistoryFurther information History of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia in 2001 as a feeder project to supplement Nupedia The project was originally funded by Bomis Wales s for profit business and edited by a rapidly growing community of volunteer editors The early community discussed a variety of ways to support the ongoing costs of upkeep and was broadly opposed to running ads on the site 14 so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence 15 That also addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto trademarks for the project The name Wikimedia a compound of wiki and media was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Wikipedia mailing list in March 2003 16 three months after Wiktionary became the second wiki based project hosted on the original server The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in Florida on June 20 2003 1 17 A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003 18 The Foundation was granted section 501 c 3 status by the U S Internal Revenue Code as a public charity in 2005 making donations to the Foundation tax deductible for U S federal income tax purposes 19 Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities NTEE code is B60 Adult Continuing education 20 21 The Foundation applied to trademark the name Wikipedia in the US on September 14 2004 The mark was granted registration status on January 10 2006 Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16 2004 and by the European Union on January 20 2005 Subsets of Wikipedia were already being distributed in book and DVD form and there were discussions about licensing the logo and wordmark 22 On December 11 2006 the Foundation s board noted that it could not become a membership organization as initially planned but not implemented due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida statutory law The bylaws were accordingly amended to remove all references to membership rights and activities 23 In 2007 the Foundation decided to move its headquarters from Florida to the San Francisco Bay Area Considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like minded organizations and potential partners a better talent pool as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel 24 25 26 The move was completed by January 31 2008 into a headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco 27 It later moved to New Montgomery Street and then to One Montgomery Tower 28 On October 25 2021 the Foundation launched Wikimedia Enterprise a commercial Wikimedia content delivery service aimed at groups that want to use high volume APIs starting with Big Tech enterprises 29 30 In June 2022 Google and the Internet Archive were announced as the service s first customers though only Google will pay for the service 31 The same announcement noted a shifting focus towards smaller companies with similar data needs supporting the service through a lot paying a little Projects and initiativesWikimedia projects For the complete list see wmf Special SiteMatrix and m Complete list of Wikimedia projects Logos of 15 Wikimedia sister projects Content on most Wikimedia project websites is licensed for redistribution under v3 0 of the Attribution and Share alike Creative Commons licenses The Foundation owns and operates 11 wikis that are written curated designed and governed by their communities of volunteer editors Any member of the public is welcomed to contribute registering a named user account is optional These wikis follow a free content model with the stated goal of disseminating knowledge to the world They include by launch date Wikipedia online encyclopedia Wiktionary online dictionary and thesaurus Wikibooks collection of books mostly textbooks Wikiquote collection of quotations Wikivoyage travel guide Wikisource digital library Wikimedia Commons repository of images sounds videos and general media Wikispecies taxonomic catalog of species Wikinews online newspaper Wikiversity collection of tutorials and courses also a hosting point to coordinate research Wikidata knowledge baseCertain additional projects provide infrastructure or coordination of the free knowledge projects These include Meta Wiki central site for coordinating all projects and the Wikimedia community Wikimedia Incubator a single wiki for drafting the core pages of new language editions in development MediaWiki site for coordinating work on MediaWiki software Wikitech including Wikimedia Cloud Services Data Services Toolforge and other technical projects and infrastructure Phabricator not a wiki but a global ticketing system for tracking issues and feature requestsAffiliates Further information Wikimedia movement and List of Wikimedia chapters Wikimedia affiliates are independent and formally recognized groups of people working together to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement The Wikimedia Foundation recognizes three types of affiliates chapters thematic organizations and user groups Affiliates organize and engage in activities to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement such as regional conferences outreach edit a thons hackathons public relations public policy advocacy GLAM engagement and Wikimania 32 33 34 While many of these things are also done by individual contributors or less formal groups they are not referred to as affiliates Recognition of chapters and thematic organizations which must be incorporated non profits is approved by the Foundation s board on the recommendation of an Affiliations Committee composed of Wikimedia community members The Affiliations Committee directly approves the recognition of unincorporated user groups Affiliates are formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation but are independent of it with no legal control of or responsibility for Wikimedia projects and their content 33 34 35 The Foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004 36 In 2012 the Foundation approved finalized and adopted the thematic organization and user group recognition models An additional model for movement partners was also approved but as of May 19 2022 update has not yet been finalized or adopted 34 37 Wikimania Main article Wikimania Wikimania is an annual global conference for Wikimedians and Wikipedians started in 2005 The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt Germany in 2005 Wikimania is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter with support from local institutions such as a library or university and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires 38 Cambridge 39 Haifa 40 Hong Kong 41 Taipei London 42 Mexico City 43 Esino Lario Italy 44 Montreal Cape Town and Stockholm The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok was canceled due to the COVID 19 pandemic along with those of 2021 and 2022 which were held online as a series of virtual interactive presentations In 2023 it is scheduled to be held in Singapore TechnologyThe Wikimedia Foundation maintains the hardware that runs its projects in its own servers It also maintains the MediaWiki platform and many other software libraries that run its projects Hardware See also Wikipedia Hardware operations and support Overview of system architecture April 2020 See server layout diagrams on Meta Wiki Wikimedia Foundation servers Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004 when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture 45 Server downtime in 2003 led to the first fundraising drive By December 2009 Wikimedia ran on co located servers with 300 servers in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam 46 In 2008 it also switched from multiple different Linux operating system vendors to Ubuntu Linux 47 48 In 2019 it switched to Debian 49 By January 2013 Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn Virginia citing reasons of more reliable connectivity and fewer hurricanes 50 51 In years prior the hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress 52 In October 2013 Wikimedia Foundation started looking for a second facility that would be used side by side with the main facility in Ashburn citing reasons of redundancy e g emergency fallback and to prepare for simultaneous multi datacentre service 53 54 This followed a year in which a fiber cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012 55 56 Apart from the second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014 57 58 the number of servers needed to run the infrastructure in a single facility has been mostly stable since 2009 As of November 2015 the main facility in Ashburn hosts 520 servers in total which includes servers for newer services besides Wikimedia project wikis such as cloud services Toolforge 59 60 and various services for metrics monitoring and other system administration 61 In 2017 Wikimedia Foundation deployed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore the first of its kind in Asia 62 Software The operation of Wikimedia depends on MediaWiki a custom made free and open source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MariaDB database since 2013 63 previously the MySQL database was used 64 The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language variables a transclusion system for templates and URL redirection MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects Originally Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams Phase I which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks the double bracket style was incorporated later Starting in January 2002 Phase II Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database this software was custom made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand In July 2002 Phase III Wikipedia shifted to the third generation software MediaWiki originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker Some MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software In April 2005 an Apache Lucene extension 65 66 was added to MediaWiki s built in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene and later switched to CirrusSearch which is based on Elasticsearch for searching 67 The Wikimedia Foundation also uses CiviCRM 68 and WordPress 69 The Foundation published official Wikipedia mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and in March 2015 the apps were updated to include mobile user friendly features 70 Finances Wikimedia Foundation revenue in US 2003 2022Black Net assets excluding the Endowment Green Revenue excluding direct donations to the Endowment Red Expenses including WMF payments into the Endowment 71 The Wikimedia Foundation mainly finances itself through donations from the public collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia as well as grants from various tech companies and philanthropic organizations 9 72 Campaigns for the Wikimedia Endowment have included emails asking donors to leave Wikimedia money in their will 73 As a 501c3 charity the Foundation is exempt from federal and state income tax 74 75 It is not a private foundation and contributions to it qualify as tax deductible charitable contributions 72 In 2007 2008 and 2009 Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of four out of four possible stars 76 increased from three to four stars in 2010 77 As of January 2020 update the rating was still four stars overall score 98 14 out of 100 based on data from FY2018 78 The Foundation also increases its revenue by federal grants sponsorship services and brand merchandising The Wikimedia OAI PMH update feed service targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing was a source of revenue for a number of years 79 80 DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge 81 An expanded version of data feeds and content services was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise an LLC subsidiary of the Foundation 82 In July 2014 the Foundation announced it would accept Bitcoin donations 83 In 2021 cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0 08 of all donations 84 85 and on May 1 2022 the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations following a Wikimedia community vote 85 86 The Foundation s net assets grew from an initial US 57 000 at the end of its first fiscal year ending June 30 2004 87 to US 53 5 million in mid 2014 88 89 and US 231 million plus a US 100 million endowment by the end of June 2021 that year the Foundation also announced plans to launch Wikimedia Enterprise to let large people pay by volume for high volume access to otherwise rate limited APIs 90 In 2020 the Foundation donated US 4 5 million to Tides Advocacy to create a Knowledge Equity Fund to provide grants to organizations whose work would not otherwise be covered by Wikimedia grants but addresses racial inequities in accessing and contributing to free knowledge resources 91 92 Wikimedia Endowment In January 2016 the Foundation announced the creation of an endowment to safeguard its future 93 The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor advised fund at the Tides Foundation with a stated goal to raise US 100 million in the next 10 years 94 Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors giving US 1 million 95 Peter Baldwin and his wife Lisbet Rausing donated US 5 million to it in 2017 96 In 2018 major donations to the endowment were received from Amazon and Facebook US 1 million each and George Soros US 2 million 97 98 99 In 2019 donations included US 2 million from Google 100 US 3 5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing 96 US 2 5 million more from Newmark 101 and another US 1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020 102 103 As of 2022 the advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales Peter Baldwin former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and Phoebe Ayers former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation investor Annette Campbell White businessman Niels Christian Nielsen and venture capitalist Michael Kim The Foundation itself has provided annual grants of 5 million to its Endowment since 2016 104 These amounts have been recorded as part of the Foundation s awards and grants expenses 105 In September 2021 the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial 100 million fundraising goal in June 2021 five years ahead of its initial target 4 Financial development The Foundation summarizes its assets in the Statements of Activities in its audited reports These do not include funds in the Wikimedia Endowment however expenses from the 2015 16 financial year onward include payments to the Wikimedia Endowment 106 Year Source Revenue Expenses Asset rise Net assets atend of year2021 2022 PDF 154 686 521 145 970 915 8 173 996 239 351 5322020 2021 PDF 162 886 686 111 839 819 50 861 811 231 177 5362019 2020 PDF 129 234 327 112 489 397 14 674 300 180 315 7252018 2019 PDF 120 067 266 91 414 010 30 691 855 165 641 4252017 2018 PDF 104 505 783 81 442 265 21 619 373 134 949 5702016 2017 PDF 91 242 418 69 136 758 21 547 402 113 330 1972015 2016 PDF 81 862 724 65 947 465 13 962 497 91 782 7952014 2015 PDF 75 797 223 52 596 782 24 345 277 77 820 2982013 2014 PDF 52 465 287 45 900 745 8 285 897 53 475 0212012 2013 PDF 48 635 408 35 704 796 10 260 066 45 189 1242011 2012 PDF 38 479 665 29 260 652 10 736 914 34 929 0582010 2011 PDF 24 785 092 17 889 794 9 649 413 24 192 1442009 2010 PDF 17 979 312 10 266 793 6 310 964 14 542 7312008 2009 PDF 8 658 006 5 617 236 3 053 599 8 231 7672007 2008 PDF 5 032 981 3 540 724 3 519 886 5 178 1682006 2007 PDF 2 734 909 2 077 843 654 066 1 658 2822005 2006 PDF 1 508 039 791 907 736 132 1 004 2162004 2005 PDF 379 088 177 670 211 418 268 0842003 2004 PDF 80 129 23 463 56 666 56 666Expenses A plurality of Wikimedia Foundation expenses are salaries and wages followed by community and affiliate grants contributions to the endowment and other professional operating expenses and services 107 71 Wikimedia Foundation expenses 2004 2020 Wikimedia Foundation s expenses evolution by rubrics in USD Wikimedia Foundation s expenses as a percentage of the whole Grants Wikimedia Foundation and chapters finance meeting 2012 Paris The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history In 2008 the Foundation received a US 40 000 grant from the Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Wikipedia 108 It also received a US 262 000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to purchase hardware 109 a US 500 000 unrestricted grant from Vinod and Neeru Khosla 110 who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board 111 and US 177 376 from the historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin Arcadia Fund among others 109 In March 2008 the Foundation announced what was then its largest donation yet a three year US 3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation 112 In 2009 the Foundation received four grants The first was a US 890 000 Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first time authors of Wikipedia 113 The second was a US 300 000 Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for Wikimedia Commons to improve the interface for uploading multimedia files 114 In August 2009 the Foundation received a US 500 000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 115 Also in August 2009 the Omidyar Network committed up to US 2 million over two years to Wikimedia 116 In 2010 Google donated US 2 million 117 and the Stanton Foundation granted 1 2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative a pilot program for what later became the Wikipedia Education Program and the spin off Wiki Education Foundation 118 119 120 In March 2011 the Sloan Foundation authorized another US 3 million grant to be funded over three years with the first US 1 million to come in July 2011 and the remaining US 2 million to be funded in August 2012 and 2013 As a donor Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 121 In August 2011 the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a US 3 6 million grant of which US 1 8 million was funded and the remainder was to come in September 2012 As of 2011 this was the largest grant the Wikimedia Foundation had ever received 122 In November 2011 the Foundation received a US 500 000 donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation 123 124 In 2012 the Foundation was awarded a grant of US 1 25 million from Lisbet Rausing 123 and Peter Baldwin through the Charities Aid Foundation scheduled to be funded in five equal installments from 2012 through 2015 In 2014 the Foundation received the largest single gift in its history a 5 million unrestricted donation from an anonymous donor supporting 1 million worth of expenses annually for the next five years 125 In March 2012 The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation established by the Intel co founder and his wife awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a US 449 636 grant to develop Wikidata 126 This was part of a larger grant much of which went to Wikimedia Germany which took on ownership of the development effort 127 Between 2014 and 2015 the Foundation received US 500 000 from the Monarch Fund US 100 000 from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to support the Wikipedia Zero initiative 128 129 130 In 2015 a grant agreement was reached with the John S and James L Knight Foundation to build a search engine called the Knowledge Engine a project that proved controversial 131 132 In 2017 the Sloan Foundation awarded another US 3 million grant for a three year period 121 and Google donated another 1 1 million to the Foundation in 2019 133 The following have donated US 500 000 or more each 2008 2019 not including gifts to the Wikimedia Endowment list may be incomplete Total US 000s Donor Years9 000 Sloan Foundation 2008 20132017 20195 952 Stanton Foundation 2009 20125 000 anonymous 2014 20183 100 Google 2010 20192 000 Omidyar Network 2009 20101 527 Rausing Baldwinvia Arcadia Charities Aid 20082012 20151 300 Hewlett 2009 2010500 Sergey Brin amp Anne Wojcicki 2010500 Monarch Fund 2014 2015StaffHistory Foundation staff in January 2019 In 2004 the Foundation appointed Tim Starling as developer liaison to help improve the MediaWiki software Daniel Mayer as chief financial officer finance budgeting and coordination of fund drives and Erik Moller as content partnership coordinator In May 2005 the Foundation announced seven more official appointments 134 In January 2006 the Foundation created a number of committees including the Communication Committee in an attempt to further organize activities somewhat handled by volunteers at that time 135 Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program As of October 4 2006 update the Foundation had five paid employees 136 two programmers an administrative assistant a coordinator handling fundraising and grants and an interim executive director 137 Brad Patrick previously the Foundation s general counsel Patrick ceased his activity as interim director in January 2007 and then resigned from his position as legal counsel effective April 1 2007 He was replaced by Mike Godwin who served as general counsel and legal coordinator from July 2007 138 to 2010 In January 2007 Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez joined as head of communications 139 Doran began working as a part time bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a temporary agency Doran found to have had a criminal record 140 left the Foundation in July 2007 and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor she became the executive director in December 2007 141 Florence Devouard cited Doran s departure from the organization as one of the reasons the Foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit 142 Exterior view of the previous Wikimedia Foundation s San Francisco headquarters at New Montgomery St in 2014 Danny Wool officially the grant coordinator and also involved in fundraising and business development resigned in March 2007 He accused Wales of misusing the Foundation s funds for recreational purposes and said that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits a claim Wales denied 143 In February 2007 the Foundation added a position chapters coordinator and hired Delphine Menard 144 who had been occupying the position as a volunteer since August 2005 Cary Bass was hired in March 2007 in the position of volunteer coordinator In January 2008 the Foundation appointed Veronique Kessler as the new chief financial and operating officer Kul Wadhwa as head of business development and Jay Walsh as head of communications In March 2013 Gardner announced she would be leaving her position at the Foundation 145 Lila Tretikov was appointed executive director in May 2014 146 147 she resigned in March 2016 Former chief communications officer Katherine Maher was appointed the interim executive director a position made permanent in June 2016 148 Maher served as executive director until April 2021 149 150 Present department structure One Montgomery Tower the building where the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters have been located since 2017 As of October 2 2021 update there were around 700 people working at the Foundation 151 Maryana Iskander was named the incoming CEO in September 2021 and took over that role in January 2022 152 As of July 2022 the WMF has the following department structure 153 Advancement responsible for fundraising strategic partnerships and grantmaking programs Communications responsible for Wikimedia brand development marketing social media public relations and global awareness efforts Finance and Administration responsible for ensuring responsible management of Wikimedia Foundation funds and resources Legal responsible for mounting opposition to government surveillance and censorship defending volunteer communities facilitating policy discussions and advocating for privacy Product responsible for building collaborative tools for knowledge sharing user research experience design and cross device support including mobile apps and voice technology Talent and Culture responsible for recruitment and training Technology responsible for maintaining and developing the technology platform underpinning the Wikimedia projects in collaboration with thousands of volunteer developers Board of Trustees The Foundation s board of trustees supervises the activities of the Foundation The founding board had three members to which two community elected trustees were added Starting in 2008 it was composed of ten members three selected by the community encompassed by all the different Wikimedia projects two selected by Wikimedia chapters four appointed by the board itself and one founder s seat reserved for Jimmy Wales 154 155 Over time the size of the board and details of the selection processes have evolved As of 2020 the board may have up to 16 trustees 156 eight seats sourced from the wider Wikimedia community affiliates and volunteer community seven appointed by the board itself and one founder s seat reserved for Wales As of October 2021 update the board comprised six community and affiliate selected trustees Nataliia Tymkiv Shani Evenstein Sigalov Dariusz Jemielniak Rosie Stephenson Goodknight Victoria Doronina and Lorenzo Losa 157 four Board appointed trustees McKinsey amp Company director Raju Narisetti 158 Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra a Al Shafei 159 management consulting executive Lisa Lewin and McAfee executive Tanya Capuano and Wales 155 Tymkiv chairs the board with Al Shafei and Sigalov as vice chairs 160 In 2015 James Heilman a trustee recently elected to the board by the community 161 was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board 162 163 This decision generated dispute among members of the Wikipedia community 164 165 Heilman later said that he was given the option of resigning by the Board over the last few weeks As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so I saw such a move as letting down those who elected me 166 He subsequently added that while on the Board he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation s Knowledge Engine project and its financing 167 and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal 168 Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017 169 In January 2016 Arnnon Geshuri joined the board before stepping down amid community controversy about a no poach agreement he executed when at Google which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US 415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees 170 171 Independent contractorsAmong firms regularly listed as independent contractors in the Wikimedia Foundation s Form 990 disclosures are the law firm Jones Day and the PR firm Minassian Media the latter was founded by Craig Minassian a full time executive at the Clinton Foundation 172 DisputesSee also Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation Wikimedia Foundation post SOPA party 2012 A number of disputes have resulted in litigation 173 174 175 176 while others have not 177 Attorney Matt Zimmerman has said Without strong liability protection it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user created encyclopedia content 178 In December 2011 the Foundation hired Washington D C lobbyist Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC to lobby Congress 179 At the time of the hire the Foundation was concerned about a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act 180 The communities were as well organizing some of the most visible protest against the bill on the Internet alongside other popular websites In October 2013 a German court ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation can be held liable for content added to Wikipedia when there has been a specific complaint otherwise the Wikimedia Foundation does not check the content Wikipedia publishes and has no duty to do so 181 In June 2014 Bildkonst Upphovsratt i Sverige filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikimedia Sweden 182 On June 20 2014 a defamation lawsuit Law Division civil case No L 1400 14 involving Wikipedia editors was filed with the Mercer County Superior Court in New Jersey seeking inter alia compensatory and punitive damages 183 184 In a March 10 2015 op ed for The New York Times Wales and Tretikov announced the Foundation was filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency and five other government agencies and officials including DOJ calling into question its practice of mass surveillance which they argued infringed the constitutional rights of the Foundation s readers editors and staff They were joined in the suit by eight additional plaintiffs including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch 185 186 187 On October 23 2015 the United States District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed the suit Wikimedia Foundation v NSA on grounds of standing U S District Judge T S Ellis III ruled that the plaintiffs could not plausibly prove they were subject to upstream surveillance and that their argument is riddled with assumptions speculations and mathematical gymnastics 188 189 The plaintiffs filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on February 17 2016 190 In September 2020 WMF s application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO was blocked after objections from the government of China 191 over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan 192 In October 2021 WMF s second application was blocked by the government of China for the same reason 193 In May 2022 six Wikimedia movement affiliate chapters were blocked from being accredited to WIPO s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights SCCR by China claiming that the chapters were spreading disinformation 194 In July 2022 China blocked an application by seven Wikimedia chapters to be accredited as permanent observers to WIPO 195 China s position was supported by a number of other countries including Russia Pakistan Iran Algeria Zimbabwe and Venezuela 196 Excessive spending and fundraising In 2014 Jimmy Wales was confronted with allegations that WMF had a poor cost benefit ratio for a miserable cost benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works He acknowledged that he had been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch show stopping bugs 197 During the 2015 fundraising campaign some members of the community voiced their concerns about the fundraising banners They argued that they were obtrusive and could deceive potential donors by giving the impression that Wikipedia had immediate financial problems which was not true The Wikimedia Foundation vowed to improve wording on further fundraising campaigns to avoid these issues 198 In February 2017 an op ed published by The Signpost the English Wikipedia s online newspaper titled Wikipedia has Cancer 199 200 produced a debate in both the Wikipedian community and the wider public The author criticized the Wikimedia Foundation for its ever increasing annual spending which he argued could put the project at financial risk should an unexpected event happen The author proposed to cap spending build up the endowment and restructure the endowment so that WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad 201 Knowledge Engine project Main article Knowledge Engine Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Engine was a search engine project initiated in 2015 by WMF to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information on the Internet 202 The KE s goal was to be less reliant on traditional search engines It was funded with a US 250 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Wikipedia August 29 2014 retrieved December 3 2022 Dewey Caitlin December 2 2015 Wikipedia has a ton of money So why is it begging you to donate yours The Washington Post Archived from the original on July 10 2018 Retrieved July 9 2018 Wikipedia Wikipedia Signpost 2017 02 27 Op ed June 1 2021 Archived from the original on February 18 2022 Retrieved February 18 2022 via Wikipedia Macon Guy Wikipedia has cancer Archived from the original on November 20 2018 Retrieved October 14 2019 Joon Ian Wong May 8 2017 Reddit is going nuts over Wikipedia s spending but it s doing far better than its competitors Quartz Archived from the original on July 9 2018 Retrieved July 9 2018 a b Koebler Jason February 16 2016 The Secret Search Engine Tearing Wikipedia Apart Vice Archived from the original on July 9 2018 Retrieved July 9 2018 McGee Matt February 15 2016 Wikimedia Foundation Secures 250 000 Grant For Search Engine Development Search Engine Land Archived from the original on May 23 2016 Retrieved 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Organization Wikimedia Foundation 2022 23 Annual Plan draft Wikimedia Foundation annual reports Wikimedia Foundation bylaws Wikimedia Foundation social media profiles Twitter YouTubeFinancials Wikimedia Foundation s 2020 2021 audited financial statements Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 tax filingsCharity status Wikimedia Foundation profile at Charity Navigator charitynavigator orgCommunity Wikimedia mailing list archives Global community site for the Wikimedia Foundation s projects meta wikimedia org Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Wikimedia Foundation amp oldid 1130792167, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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