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The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American
501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...
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 U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
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 refer ...
, a
crowdsourced Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
online encyclopedia, it also hosts other related projects and
MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...
, 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 documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
. The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in
St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the ...
, 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 Wikipedi ...
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 refer ...
,
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 Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
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 Wikipedi ...
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, 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, was coined by American author
Sheldon Rampton Sheldon Rampton (born August 4, 1957) is an American editor and author. He was editor of ''PR Watch'', and is the author of several books that criticize the public relations industry and what he sees as other forms of corporate and government prop ...
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) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...
status by the U.S.
Internal Revenue Code The Internal Revenue Code (IRC), formally the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, is the domestic portion of federal statutory tax law in the United States, published in various volumes of the United States Statutes at Large, and separately as Title 26 ...
as a public charity in 2005, making donations to the Foundation
tax-deductible Tax deduction is a reduction of income that is able to be taxed and is commonly a result of expenses, particularly those incurred to produce additional income. Tax deductions are a form of tax incentives, along with exemptions and tax credits. T ...
for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Its
National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) is a used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and NCCS to classify U.S. tax-exempt organizations. A specialist from the IRS assigns an NTEE code to each organization exempt under I.R.C. § 501(a) as ...
(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 major ...
,
Continuing education Continuing education (similar to further education in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, 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 ...
). 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 des ...
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 A membership organization is any organization that allows people or entities to subscribe, and often requires them to pay a membership fee or " subscription". Membership organizations typically have a particular purpose, which involves connecting p ...
, 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 Go ...
. 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 One Montgomery Tower (also known as Montgomery Tower and formerly Pacific Telesis Tower), part of the Post Montgomery Center complex, is an office skyscraper located at the northeast corner of Post and Kearny Streets in the financial district of ...
. On October 25, 2021, the Foundation launched
Wikimedia Enterprise Wikimedia Enterprise is a commercial product by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide, in a more easily consumable way, the data of the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. It allows customers to retrieve data at large scale and high availability ...
, a commercial Wikimedia content delivery service aimed at groups that want to use high-volume APIs, starting with
Big Tech Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, refers to the most dominant companies in the information technology industry, mostly located in the United States. The term also refers to the four or five largest American tech companies, called the Big ...
enterprises. In June 2022,
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
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 Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
s is licensed for redistribution under v3.0 of the Attribution and
Share-alike Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copy ...
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 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 refer ...
online encyclopedia *
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 *
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 any ...
– 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 physical arr ...
s, mostly textbooks *
Wikiquote Wikiquote is part of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation using MediaWiki software. Based on an idea by Daniel Alston and implemented by Brion Vibber, the project's objective is to produce collaboratively a vast refer ...
– 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 Wikivoyage is a free web-based travel guide for travel destinations and travel topics written by volunteer authors. It is a sister project of Wikipedia and supported and hosted by the same non-profit Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikivoyage has ...
travel guide A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourists". It will usually include information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying det ...
*
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 rep ...
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 me ...
*
Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all of the Wikimedia projects in ...
– repository of images, sounds, videos, and general media *
Wikispecies Wikispecies is a wiki-based online project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aim is to create a comprehensive open content catalogue of all species; the project is directed at scientists, rather than at the general public. Jimmy Wales ...
taxonomic Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
catalog of
species In biology, a species is the basic unit of 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 the appropriate s ...
*
Wikinews Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be ...
online newspaper An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Going online created more opportunities for newspa ...
*
Wikiversity Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather ...
– collection of tutorials and courses, also a hosting point to coordinate research * Wikidata
knowledge base A knowledge base (KB) is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems, which were the first knowledge-based systems. Ori ...
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 According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software. ...

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 wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...
software
Wikitech
– including Wikimedia Cloud Services, Data Services, Toolforge, and other technical projects and infrastructure *
Phabricator Phabricator is a suite of web-based development collaboration tools, which includes ''Differential'' code review tool, ''Diffusion'' repository browser, ''Herald'' change monitoring tool, ''Maniphest'' bug tracker, ''Phriction'' wiki. Phab ...
– 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-thon An edit-a-thon (sometimes written editathon) is an event where some editors of online communities such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap (also as a "mapathon"), and LocalWiki edit and improve a specific topic or type of content. The events typically i ...
s,
hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...
s,
public relation Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...
s,
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 p ...
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 na ...
, 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 and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
,
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 bec ...
,
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 metropol ...
,
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 Delt ...
,
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 n ...
,
London London is the capital and 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 down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
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 o ...
,
Esino Lario Esino Lario (; Lecchese: ; locally ) is a municipality (''comune'') of the Province of Lecco in the Italian region of Lombardy. It is about north of Milan, northwest of Lecco, and about from the eastern shore of Lake Como. The area aroun ...
,
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 re ...
,
Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
,
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 largest ...
, and
Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
. The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in
Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, 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 estima ...
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 identif ...
, 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 ...
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 D ...
. By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in
Ashburn, Virginia Ashburn is a census-designated place (CDP) in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. At the 2010 United States Census, its population was 43,511, up from 3,393 twenty years earlier. It is northwest of Washington, D.C., and part of the Washingt ...
, citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer
hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...
s". 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 incorporate ...
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 Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed computing, ...
(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 wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...
, 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 Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
wiki software Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...
platform written in
PHP PHP is a 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 implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
and built upon the MariaDB
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 sp ...
since 2013; previously the MySQL database was used. The software incorporates programming features such as a
macro language In computer programming, a macro (short for "macro instruction"; ) is a rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input should be mapped to a replacement output. Applying a macro to an input is known as macro expansion. The input and output ...
, variables, a transclusion system for
templates Template may refer to: Tools * Die (manufacturing), used to cut or shape material * Mold, in a molding process * Stencil, a pattern or overlay used in graphic arts (drawing, painting, etc.) and sewing to replicate letters, shapes or designs Co ...
, 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 users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...
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 Use ...
written in
Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...
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 Camel case (sometimes stylized as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of writing phrases without spaces or punctuation. The format indicates the separation of words with a single ...
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 Heinrich Magnus Manske (born 24 May 1974) is a senior staff scientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK and a software developer of one of the first versions of the MediaWiki software, which powers Wikipedia and a number o ...
. 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 Lee Daniel Crocker (born July 3, 1963) is an American computer programmer. He is best known for rewriting the software upon which Wikipedia runs, to address scalability problems. This software, originally known as "Phase III", went live in July 2 ...
. Some MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005, an
Apache Lucene Apache Lucene is a free and open-source search engine software library, originally written in Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License. Lucene is widely used as ...
extension was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to
Lucene Apache Lucene is a free and open-source search engine software library, originally written in Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License. Lucene is widely used as a ...
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 content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...
. 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 d ...
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 iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
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 Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a free 501(c)(3) organization. It provides insights into a nonprofit’s financial s ...
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 grant In the United States, federal grants are economic aid issued by the United States government out of the general federal revenue. A federal grant is an award of financial assistance from a federal agency to a recipient to carry out a public purp ...
s, 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 distr ...
donations. In 2021,
cryptocurrencies A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank A bank is a financial i ...
accounted for just 0.08% of all donations and on May 1, 2022, the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a
Wikimedia community According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software. ...
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 Tides Foundation is an American Charitable organization, public charity and fiscal sponsorship, fiscal sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care, labor issues, immigrant righ ...
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 Tides Foundation is an American public charity and fiscal sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care, labor issues, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights and human ...
, 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 Anna Lisbet Kristina Rausing (born 9 June 1960) is a science historian and philanthropist. She is a co-founder of Arcadia, one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations. Early life Lisbet Rausing is the eldest daughter of Hans Rausing and his ...
, 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 technology c ...
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 M ...
( 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 Wikipedi ...
, Peter Baldwin, former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and
Phoebe Ayers Phoebe or Phœbe may refer to: __NOTOC__ People and characters * Phoebe (given name), a list of people, mythological, biblical and fictional characters *Phoebe (Greek myth), several characters * Phoebe, an epithet of Artemis/Diana (mythology), Diana ...
, former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor
Doron Weber Doron Weber (born 1955) is an American author best known for his memoir, ''Immortal Bird: A Family Memoir'', and a foundation executive. Born on a kibbutz in Israel in 1955, he attended Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, New York where he wa ...
of the
Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support or ...
, investor
Annette Campbell-White Annette J. Campbell-White is a New Zealand-born venture capitalist. Biography Campbell-White was born in New Zealand and attended the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and M ...
, 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 Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a sta ...
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 Vinod ( hi, विनोद , mr, विनोद , gu, વિનોદ) is a male given name used in India and Nepal, meaning "delight", "enjoyment", or "pleasure". People *Vinod Agarwal, Indian-American businessman and scientist * Vinod Agg ...
and
Neeru Khosla Neeru Khosla (born 1955/1956) is the co-founder and chair of the non-profit CK12 Foundation. Early life Having grown up in India and England, Khosla wanted to be a doctor. She had an aptitude for science, but the prerequisite for medicine of anim ...
, who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board, and from the historians
Lisbet Rausing Anna Lisbet Kristina Rausing (born 9 June 1960) is a science historian and philanthropist. She is a co-founder of Arcadia, one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations. Early life Lisbet Rausing is the eldest daughter of Hans Rausing and his ...
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 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support or ...
. 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 Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all of the Wikimedia projects in ...
, to improve the interface for uploading multimedia files. In August 2009, the Foundation received a grant from The William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commonly known as the Hewlett Foundation, is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Redington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1966. The Hewlett Foundation aw ...
. Also in August 2009, the
Omidyar Network Omidyar Network is a self-styled "philanthropic investment firm," composed of a foundation and an impact investment firm. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, Omidyar Network has committed over $1.5billion to n ...
committed up to over two years to Wikimedia. In 2010,
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
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 The Wiki Education Foundation (sometimes abbreviated Wiki Ed) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. It runs the Wikipedia Education Program, which promotes the integration of Wikipedia into coursework by educato ...
). 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 Doron Weber (born 1955) is an American author best known for his memoir, ''Immortal Bird: A Family Memoir'', and a foundation executive. Born on a kibbutz in Israel in 1955, he attended Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, New York where he wa ...
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 Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was t ...
. In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of from
Lisbet Rausing Anna Lisbet Kristina Rausing (born 9 June 1960) is a science historian and philanthropist. She is a co-founder of Arcadia, one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations. Early life Lisbet Rausing is the eldest daughter of Hans Rausing and his ...
and Peter Baldwin through the
Charities Aid Foundation The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) is a registered UK charity that operates in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada. It works with companies, private philanthropists, regular donors, fellow foundations, governments, cha ...
, 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. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
co-founder and his wife, awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a grant to develop Wikidata. 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 Wikipedia Zero was a project by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide access to Wikipedia free of charge on mobile phones via zero-rating, particularly in developing markets. The objective of the program was to facilitate access to free knowledge ...
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 wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...
software, Daniel Mayer as chief financial officer (
finance Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
,
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, environmen ...
, 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, Brad Patrick, previously the Foundation's
general counsel A general counsel, also known as chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO), is the chief in-house lawyer for a company or a governmental department. In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their ...
. 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 ...
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 Sue Gardner (born May 11, 1967) is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, and before that was the director of the Can ...
was hired as consultant and special advisor; she became the executive director in December 2007.Sue Gardner Hired as Executive Director
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 Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...
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 Lila Tretikov () (born Olga (Lyalya) Tretyakova, russian: Ольга (Ляля) Третьяко́ва, January 25, 1978) is a Russian–American engineer and manager. Early life and education Tretikov was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. Her fath ...
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 Institu ...
was appointed the interim executive director, a position made permanent in June 2016. Maher served as executive director until April 2021.


Present department structure

there were around 700 people working at the Foundation.
Maryana Iskander Maryana Iskander (; ar, ماريانا إسكندر; born September 1, 1975) is an Egyptian-born American social entrepreneur and lawyer. In 2022, she became the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Wikimedia Foundation, succeeding Katherine Ma ...
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 organiz ...
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 Dariusz Jemielniak (born 17 March 1975) is a full professor of management, the head of MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) department at Kozminski University, faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society ...
,
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 Esra'a Al Shafei ( ar, إسراء الشافعي ''’Asrā’ ash-Shāfa’ī''; born 23 July 1986) is a Bahraini civil rights activist, blogger, and the founder and executive director of Majal (organization), Majal (Mideast Youth) and its rel ...
, 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 Board Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate Letter (alphabet), letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some auth ...
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." 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 technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
, which violated
United States antitrust law In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman ...
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 Jones Day is an American multinational law firm. As of 2021, it was the eighth largest law firm in the U.S. and the 13th highest grossing law firm in the world. Originally headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Jones Day ranks first in both M&A le ...
and the PR firm
Minassian Media Craig Minassian is the chief communications and marketing officer of the Clinton Foundation as well as a producer and the founder of the PR firm Minassian Media. During the presidency of Bill Clinton he served as assistant press secretary and dire ...
; the latter was founded by
Craig Minassian Craig Minassian is the chief communications and marketing officer of the Clinton Foundation as well as a producer and the founder of the PR firm Minassian Media. During the presidency of Bill Clinton he served as assistant press secretary and direc ...
, a full-time executive at the
Clinton Foundation The Clinton Foundation (founded in 2001 as the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, and renamed in 2013 as the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation) is a nonprofit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. It was e ...
.


Disputes

A number of disputes have resulted in
litigation - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
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 A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
. 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, collecti ...
and five other government agencies and officials, including DOJ, calling into question its practice of
mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
, 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 Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
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 r ...
. 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 Upstream collection is a term used by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States for intercepting telephone and Internet traffic from the Internet backbone, meaning major Internet cables and switches, both domestic and foreign. Beside ...
, 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 The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, 15 specialized agencies of the United Nation ...
(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 nort ...
. 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 Signpost'' (formerly ''The Wikipedia Signpost'') is the Wikimedia movement's online newspaper. Managed by the volunteer community, it is published online with contributions from Wikimedia editors. The newspaper reports on the Wikimedia co ...
'', the English Wikipedia'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 ''The Signpost'' (formerly ''The Wikipedia Signpost'') is the Wikimedia movement's online newspaper. Managed by the volunteer community, it is published online with contributions from Wikimedia editors. The newspaper reports on the Wikimedia co ...
'' in 2016. Following this dispute, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Lila Tretikov Lila Tretikov () (born Olga (Lyalya) Tretyakova, russian: Ольга (Ляля) Третьяко́ва, January 25, 1978) is a Russian–American engineer and manager. Early life and education Tretikov was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. Her fath ...
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
TwitterYouTube


Financials


Wikimedia Foundation's 2020/2021 audited financial statements

Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 tax filings


Charity status


Wikimedia Foundation
profile at
Charity Navigator Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a free 501(c)(3) organization. It provides insights into a nonprofit’s financial s ...
, 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