The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American
501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
headquartered in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
and registered as
a charitable foundation under
local laws.
Best known as the hosting platform for
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...
, a
crowdsourced online encyclopedia
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Digitization of old content
In January 19 ...
, it also hosts
other related projects and
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia Website, websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sit ...
, a
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
.
The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in
St. Petersburg, Florida, by
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikip ...
as a nonprofit way to fund
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...
,
Wiktionary
Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number ...
, and other
crowdsourced wiki projects that had until then been hosted by
Bomis, Wales's for-profit company.
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.
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 , annual expenses of , net assets of and a growing endowment, which surpassed 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."
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.
The Foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the wikis itself. 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.
It also engages in
political advocacy. The Foundation's strategic direction, formulated in 2017, envisages that it "will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" by 2030.
History
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikip ...
and
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark Sanger (; born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name and wrote much of Wikipedia's original govern ...
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,
so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence. That also addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto trademarks for the project.
The name "Wikimedia", a
compound of
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
and
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
, was coined by American author
Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Wikipedia mailing list in March 2003, three months after
Wiktionary
Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number ...
became the second wiki-based project hosted on the original server. The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in Florida on June 20, 2003.
A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003. 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. Its
National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code is B60 (
Adult
An adult is a human or other animal that has reached full growth. In human context, the term ''adult'' has meanings associated with social and legal concepts. In contrast to a "minor", a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of ...
,
Continuing education
Continuing education (similar to further education in the United Kingdom and Ireland) is an all-encompassing term within a broad list of post-secondary learning activities and programs. The term is used mainly in the United States and Canada.
...
).
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
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...
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.
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.
In 2007, the Foundation decided to move its headquarters from Florida to the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
. 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.
The move was completed by January 31, 2008, into a headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco. It later moved to New Montgomery Street, and then to
One Montgomery Tower.
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.
In June 2022,
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
and the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...
were announced as the service's first customers, though only Google will pay for the service. 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
Content on most Wikimedia project
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...
s is licensed for redistribution under
v3.0 of the
Attribution and
Share-alike Creative Commons license
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
s. 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
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...
–
online encyclopedia
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Digitization of old content
In January 19 ...
*
Wiktionary
Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number ...
–
online dictionary and
thesaurus
A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:
Synonym diction ...
*
Wikibooks
Wikibooks (previously called ''Wikimedia Free Textbook Project'' and ''Wikimedia-Textbooks'') is a wiki-based Wikimedia project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content digital textbooks and annotated texts that ...
– collection of
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this phys ...
s, mostly textbooks
*
Wikiquote – collection of
quotation
A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by ...
s
*
Wikivoyage –
travel guide
*
Wikisource
Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually ...
–
digital library
A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital ...
*
Wikimedia Commons – repository of images, sounds, videos, and general media
*
Wikispecies –
taxonomic catalog of
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
*
Wikinews –
online newspaper
*
Wikiversity – collection of tutorials and courses, also a hosting point to coordinate research
*
Wikidata
Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain licen ...
–
knowledge base
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
MediaWiki is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia Website, websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sit ...
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
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
Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public ...
advocacy,
GLAM engagement, and
Wikimania.
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.
The Foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004.
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 has not yet been finalized or adopted.
Wikimania
Wikimania is an annual global conference for Wikimedians and Wikipedians, started in 2005. The first Wikimania was held in
Frankfurt
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its ...
, 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
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the Capital city, capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata ...
,
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...
,
Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropoli ...
,
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
,
Taipei
Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...
,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
,
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of ...
,
Esino Lario,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
,
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...
,
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second larges ...
, and
Stockholm. The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in
Bangkok
Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated populatio ...
was canceled due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
, 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
Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004 when the server setup was expanded into a distributed
multitier architecture. 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
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
. In 2008, it also switched from multiple different
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
operating system vendors to
Ubuntu Linux. In 2019, it switched to
Debian
Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...
.
By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an
Equinix facility in
Ashburn, Virginia, citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer
hurricanes". In years prior, the hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress.
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. This followed a year in which a
fiber
Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorpora ...
cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012.
Apart from the second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014, 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
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
s, such as
cloud services (Toolforge) and various services for metrics, monitoring, and other system administration.
In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation deployed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
, the first of its kind in Asia.
Software
The operation of Wikimedia depends on
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia Website, websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sit ...
, a custom-made,
free
Free may refer to:
Concept
* Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything
* Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism
* Emancipate, to procur ...
and
open-source wiki software platform written in
PHP
PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...
and built upon the
MariaDB
MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ...
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...
since 2013; previously the MySQL database was used. 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
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...
and it is used by all Wikimedia projects.
Originally, Wikipedia ran on
UseModWiki
UseModWiki is a wiki software written in Perl and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Pages in UseModWiki are stored in ordinary files, not in a relational database. Wikipedias in English and many other languages were powered by ...
written in
Perl
Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...
by
Clifford Adams
UseModWiki is a wiki software written in Perl and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Pages in UseModWiki are stored in ordinary files, not in a relational database. Wikipedias in English and many other languages were powered by UseM ...
(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 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. The Wikimedia Foundation also uses
CiviCRM and
WordPress
WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP, hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported secure hypert ...
.
The Foundation published official Wikipedia
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on ...
s for
Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
and
iOS devices and in March 2015, the apps were updated to include mobile user-friendly features.
Finances
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.
Campaigns for the Wikimedia Endowment have included emails asking donors to leave Wikimedia money in their will.
As a 501c3 charity, the Foundation is exempt from federal and state income tax. It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.
In 2007, 2008 and 2009,
Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of four out of four possible stars, increased from three to four stars in 2010. , the rating was still four stars (overall score 98.14 out of 100), based on data from FY2018.
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.
DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge. An expanded version of data feeds and content services was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise, an LLC subsidiary of the Foundation.
In July 2014, the Foundation announced it would accept
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...
donations. In 2021,
cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0.08% of all donations
and on May 1, 2022, the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a
Wikimedia community vote.
The Foundation's net assets grew from an initial at the end of its first fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004,
to in mid-2014
and (plus a 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.
In 2020, the Foundation donated 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.
Wikimedia Endowment
In January 2016, the Foundation announced the creation of an
endowment
Endowment most often refers to:
*A term for human penis size
It may also refer to: Finance
*Financial endowment, pertaining to funds or property donated to institutions or individuals (e.g., college endowment)
*Endowment mortgage, a mortgage to b ...
to safeguard its future. The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the
Tides Foundation, with a stated goal to raise in the next 10 years.
Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark (born December 6, 1952) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as the founder of the classifieds website Craigslist. Prior to founding Craigslist, he worked as a computer programmer for companie ...
was one of the initial donors, giving .
Peter Baldwin and his wife,
Lisbet Rausing, donated to it in 2017.
[
In 2018, major donations to the endowment were received from ]Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
and Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...
( each) and George Soros (). In 2019, donations included from Google, more from Baldwin and Rausing, more from Newmark, and another from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020.
As of 2022, the advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikip ...
, 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. These amounts have been recorded as part of the Foundation's "awards and grants" expenses. 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.[. See als]
announcement
on meta.wikimedia.org.
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.
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.
Grants
The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history.
In 2008, the Foundation received a grant from the Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Wikipedia. It also received a grant from the Stanton Foundation
The Stanton Foundation is a private foundation established by Frank Stanton, a long-time president of Columbia Broadcasting System ("CBS"). The Foundation focuses primarily on three areas in which Stanton was unable to complete his philanthro ...
to purchase hardware, a unrestricted grant from Vinod and Neeru Khosla, who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board, and from the historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin ( Arcadia Fund), among others. In March 2008, the Foundation announced what was then its largest donation yet: a three-year, grant from the Sloan Foundation.
In 2009, the Foundation received four grants. The first was a Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first-time authors of Wikipedia. The second was a Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for Wikimedia Commons, to improve the interface for uploading multimedia files. In August 2009, the Foundation received a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Also in August 2009, the Omidyar Network committed up to over two years to Wikimedia.
In 2010, Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
donated 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).
In March 2011, the Sloan Foundation authorized another grant, to be funded over three years, with the first to come in July 2011 and the remaining 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. In August 2011, the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a grant of which 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. In November 2011, the Foundation received a donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation.
In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of from Lisbet Rausing 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. In March 2012, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, established by the Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...
co-founder and his wife, awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a grant to develop Wikidata
Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain licen ...
. This was part of a larger grant, much of which went to Wikimedia Germany, which took on ownership of the development effort.
Between 2014 and 2015, the Foundation received from the Monarch Fund, from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) was established in 1996 to honor Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos (1909–1996). Niarchos was one of the world's largest transporters of oil and owned the largest supertanker fleet of his time.
Organ ...
to support the Wikipedia Zero initiative.
In 2015, a grant agreement was reached with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts.
The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...
to build a search engine called the " Knowledge Engine", a project that proved controversial. In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded another grant for a three-year period, and Google donated another $1.1 million to the Foundation in 2019.
The following have donated or more each (2008–2019, not including gifts to the Wikimedia Endowment; list may be incomplete):
Staff
History
In 2004, the Foundation appointed Tim Starling as developer liaison to help improve the MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia Website, websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sit ...
software, Daniel Mayer as chief financial officer ( finance, budgeting
A budget is a calculation play, usually but not always financial, for a defined period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including time, costs and expenses, environme ...
, and coordination of fund drives), and Erik Möller as content partnership coordinator. In May 2005, the Foundation announced seven more official appointments.
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. Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program.
, the Foundation had five paid employees: two programmers, an administrative assistant, a coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim executive director
Executive director is commonly the title of the chief executive officer of a non-profit organization, government agency or international organization.
The title is widely used in North American and European not-for-profit organizations, thoug ...
, 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
Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as rep ...
who served as general counsel and legal coordinator from July 2007 to 2010.
In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez joined as head of communications. 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, left the Foundation in July 2007 and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor; she became the executive director in December 2007.[Sue Gardner Hired as Executive Director](_blank)
Wikimedia Foundation press release. December 3, 2007 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.
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. In February 2007, the Foundation added a position, chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard, 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. Lila Tretikov was appointed executive director in May 2014; she resigned in March 2016. Former chief communications officer Katherine Maher
Katherine Roberts Maher (; born April 18, 1983) is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Maher worked for UNICEF, the National Democratic Institute ...
was appointed the interim executive director, a position made permanent in June 2016. Maher served as executive director
Executive director is commonly the title of the chief executive officer of a non-profit organization, government agency or international organization.
The title is widely used in North American and European not-for-profit organizations, thoug ...
until April 2021.
Present department structure
there were around 700 people working at the Foundation. Maryana Iskander was named the incoming CEO in September 2021, and took over that role in January 2022.
As of July 2022, the WMF has the following department structure:
* 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
A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organ ...
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.[
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:
* 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.
, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Nataliia Tymkiv, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak, ]Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
Dame Rosie Gojich Stephenson-Goodknight (born December 5, 1953), known on Wikipedia as Rosiestep, is an American Wikipedia editor who is noted for her attempts to address gender bias in the encyclopedia by running a project to increase the quant ...
, Victoria Doronina, and Lorenzo Losa); four Board-appointed trustees (McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...
director Raju Narisetti
Raju Narisetti (born 1966) is a career journalist and former editor at major international newspapers who has served as global publishing director at McKinsey & Company since 2020. From July 2018 to December 2019, he was a professor of professio ...
, Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei, management consulting executive Lisa Lewin, and McAfee executive Tanya Capuano); and Wales. Tymkiv chairs the board, with Al Shafei and Sigalov as vice chairs.
In 2015, James Heilman, a trustee recently elected to the board by the community, was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board. This decision generated dispute among members of the Wikipedia community. Heilman later said that he "was given the option of resigning y the Boardover 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." 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, and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts.
The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...
grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal. Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017.
In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri
Arnnon Geshuri (born 1969 or 1970) is an American corporate executive. He was vice president of human resources at Tesla, Inc. from 2009 until 2017, senior director of human resources and staffing at Google from 2004 to 2009, and vice presiden ...
joined the board before stepping down amid community controversy about a "no poach" agreement he executed when at Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, 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.
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.
Disputes
A number of disputes have resulted in litigation while others have not. 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."
In December 2011, the Foundation hired Washington, D.C., lobbyist Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC to lobby Congress. At the time of the hire, the Foundation was concerned about a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act. The communities were as well, organizing some of the most visible protest
A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one.
Protests can be thought of as acts of coopera ...
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.
In June 2014, Bildkonst Upphovsrätt i Sverige filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikimedia Sweden.
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.
In a March 10, 2015, op-ed for ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Wales and Tretikov announced the Foundation was filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...
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
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
. On October 23, 2015, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed the suit ''Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA
'' Wikimedia Foundation, et al. v. National Security Agency, et al.'' is a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and several other organizations against the National Security Agency (NSA ...
'' on grounds of standing. U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III
Thomas Selby Ellis III (born 1940) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, appointed by Ronald Reagan.
Education and career
Born in 1940 in Bogotá, Colombia, Elli ...
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". The plaintiffs filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on February 17, 2016.
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 over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northe ...
. In October 2021, WMF's second application was blocked by the government of China for the same reason. 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. In July 2022, China blocked an application by seven Wikimedia chapters to be accredited as permanent observers to WIPO; China's position was supported by a number of other countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
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".
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.
In February 2017, an op-ed published by '' The Signpost'', the English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of
, has the most arti ...
's online newspaper, titled "Wikipedia has Cancer", 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.
Knowledge Engine project
Knowledge Engine was a search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
project initiated in 2015 by WMF to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information on the Internet. The KE's goal was to be less reliant on traditional search engines. It was funded with a grant from the Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts.
The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...
. 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.[ Following this dispute, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov resigned.]
References
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
Wikimedia Foundation's 2020/2021 audited financial statements
Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 tax filings
Charity status
Wikimedia Foundation
profile at Charity Navigator, charitynavigator.org
Community
Wikimedia mailing list archives
Global community site for the Wikimedia Foundation's projects
(meta.wikimedia.org)
{{Authority control
2003 establishments in Florida
501(c)(3) organizations
Articles containing video clips
Charities based in California
Educational foundations in the United States
Free software project foundations in the United States
Jimmy Wales
Non-profit organizations based in San Francisco
Online nonprofit organizations
Organizations established in 2003
Wiki communities