Finance report/Archives 2004

Q4 2004 report
Daniel Mayer is the Chief Financial Officer. He is responsible for finances, with the oversight of Michael Davis. In particular, he is in charge of establishing our budget and balancing our books.

Donations and fundraising
Contributions from January through August, 2004, averaged 200 USD per day. A two-week fundraiser in September 2004 raised 60,000 USD, slightly more than the $50k goal. Around 10% of these contributions were made directly to the German chapter. These funds have sustained the project through the fall.

At the current rate of expenditure on bandwidth and machinery, that is enough to keep the site up and growing for four months. The next fundraising drive is planned to start early February 2005. An open meeting to discuss how else we could support the project's long-term growth is planned to take place before then.

The approved budget for Q4 2004 can be seen here: Budget/2004. This budget proved generous; total expenses for the quarter have only come to a little over $50k, thanks, in part, to a few in-kind donations.

The next formal budget review, including a detailed breakdown of donations since the last fundraiser, will be available in January.

Links

 * Wikimedia budget
 * PayPal donations in 2004
 * Hardware order

Donations
1180 individual PayPal donations have been made to the Foundation between the start of the year and 31 August, yielding US$46,600 (non-U.S. Currencies converted using current exchange rates), a daily average of $190. Over half that amount ($29,800) was collected in July and August mostly during an unofficial donation drive only on the English Wikipedia.

Awards
In May, the Prix Ars Electronica awarded Wikipedia their Golden Nica for Digital Communities, an award which came with a 10,000 Euro grant with no strings attached (Linz cyberarts festival 2004).

Grants
Many grants were considered for application during the summer of 2004, and many hours were devoted to an NEH grant (NEH grant) for projects in the humanities which looked promising. Histories of Wikimedia were summarized, a detailed description and budget were written for the proposed humanities project, and biographies of contributors interested in staffing the project were gathered. The application was not sent in, in the end, for lack of sufficient time. However, the text about Wikimedia which was produced, and the experience gained in writing about specific projects, will be used again in upcoming applications.

Purchases
Donations from July and August plus money raised in late December (during and immediately following a major server crash and downtime) was used to purchase over $60,000 worth of new hardware (see Wikimedia servers and Wikimedia servers/hardware orders).