So I just typed the "Total Expenses" line from page 3 of each of their financial reports [0] into Excel, this is the result: https://imgur.com/lIL79IK
It looks like quadratic growth until around 2011, after that it becomes linear. This still seems like a lot of growth, considering the number of pageviews per article seems to be roughly constant over the last 5 years [1]
Edit: this is how last year's expenses break down:
Salaries and wages: 46,146,897
Awards and grants: 12,653,284
Internet hosting: 2,335,918
In-kind service expenses: 1,361,958
Donation processing expenses: 4,977,583
Professional service expenses: 8,998,261
Other operating expenses: 9,005,744
Travel and conferences: 2,867,774
Depreciation and amortization: 2,856,901
Special event expense, net: 209,690
------------------------------------------
Total expenses: 91,414,010
It's a genuine thing for people these days to misuse the phrase "exponential growth" when they just mean "really fast grow". I don't the hyperbole was strictly intended.
Why is this surprising? Everyone who accepts credit cards has to deal with processing fees, fraud prevention, chargebacks, etc. And at a larger scale they need to deal with lawyers and contracts.
Most likely. It appears to be around 5% of this years budget. It’s typical to pay 2-3.6% in CC fees alone plus often a transaction fee of 10-30c which can add up on small $1-$5 donations (30c is 6% of $5 and much more of $1).
They may have raised more or less than their annual budget this year plus I imagine probably spend some money on their email campaigns etc.
Depending on where they are, and what those positions are, that's pretty cheap... that likely means their average employee's take home is around 80K give or take. Insurance, employer side taxes and other expenses aren't cheap. The government cuts both ways.
If you live in SF, Seattle, Portland, NYC, Boston, Chicago or Philly, 80K is lower-middle class if that. Other cities/countries, it's incredible... just depends.
If your company is spending 130k to employee someone, that likely means the persons actual salary is around 90k. Think of the insurance, administrative costs, recruitment costs etc the company bears.
No. All the writing and most of the moderation is done by volunteers. The closest to that on the Foundation's payroll are the about three community managers. The Foundation does employ the engineers writing the software, the sysadmins keeping everything running, a UX team of 14 people, a lot of people related to fundraising, as well as outreach and public relations, some legal staff and various administrative staff. There's a full list of employees and contractors at https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/
It's well-documented that active writers are paid shills for corporate clients. I've read interviews where the writer brags about his "ownership" of certain pages.
But they blatantly lie to the public when they say they need donations to continue Wikipedia. If you look at the expense report, they absolutely don't; Wikipedia is a mote of dust compared to the amount that is fundraised every year.
It's just pure greed. These sort of disinformation campaigns by nonprofits should be illegal.
Wow I had no idea those ads on wikipedia were blatant lies. I've never donated but I've definitely thought about it a few times whenever I saw those ads. This is somewhat eye-opening.
They aren't lies, the money is entirely used on the wikimedia foundation. The big "scandal" is that wikimedia has other projects outside of wikipedia like wikidata which the funds also get used on. Wikimedia has plenty of money to keep wikipedia running as it is, they need extra money to expand other fields of open data.
And if you've ever led anything, you understand the value of "buffer states". Having those satellite projects, R&D investments, etc that you nurture in the good times, because you've seen hard times, and don't care to return to them.
Donations follow the same axiom as pricing: ask for what the market will bear.
That would all be fine if the donors understood what was happening. Instead, the ads give the impression that Wikipedia is in dire need of funds. Most donors don't even know that the Wikimedia foundation does anything besides Wikipedia.
Yes, I agree, that use of the money is more defensible, although it still doesn't excuse the general urgency of the fundraising pitch, which suggests (but does not say) money is needed to keep the lights on.
It's not literally fraud in the legal sense, but it's purposefully taking advantage of the goodwill of unsophisticated donors to fund projects and people the donors predictably wouldn't approve of if they understood what was happening. The donors think they are supporting Wikipedia, and the money is largely going elsewhere. Morally, it's lying.
I had no idea. That's horrible. Are they trying to raise an endowment or something so that they can run on interest? If so that would be reasonable, but they should still be honest about it.
