this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Wikipedia is a very profitable company. They don't need as many donations as the make it seem.
Despite that, I have and will donate to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation, because they host knowledge and quite a lot of pictures. And I love it.
Let me introduce you to open street maps. https://welcome.openstreetmap.org/what-is-openstreetmap/ or more simply https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Also the Internet Archive? I always wish they crawled more of the web than they did in years past.
Salaries for key people aren’t out of this world given their scale and highest paid person taking a pay cut is a good sign: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767
Their higher-ups all earn exorbitant salaries
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries
Wow that's obscene, especially the steep rise over the years. I'll stop donating to them.
Wow that's obscene, especially the steep rise over the years. I'll stop donating to them.
Do you have a source to back this? Not to say I don't believe you but I am legitimately curious
I disagree with the use of the term "profitable" because it's a non-profit and so donations aren't going to investors or anything. Wikimedia is very transparent and efficient with donations according to Charity Navigator. That said, they do take in more in donations every year than they pay in expenses. See the financial reports they make public.
I think it's healthy for them to accrue a decent amount in case donations go away for one reason or another. I looked through that report you linked and I don't know how to make sense of whether or not it's a reasonable amount they've got sitting in the bank, to be honest.
Noted thanks
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/
Thanks for the article.
That is a 8 year old article, plus they are a democratic organisation where the board of director is elected by the editors, If they think they need the money to be the best wikipedia they can be i will take their word instead of some website owned by Jeff Bezos (And if i am reading wikipedia articles and learning, I am not wasting money and resources on amazon).
Go to wikimedia foundation's page, the 'about' menu has a link to the financials.
Mid 2022 they had $239M in assets, up from $231M the year before.
If you're german, i can link you a german video which explains it quite well
Could you still link it? There might be germans interested
Sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9UgRIPWP4w
Unfortunately I am not.