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financially sustainable?
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To put it briefly, your money pays for staff salaries, technology (servers, bandwidth and Internet hosting), the legal defense of the Foundation, and program activities around the world. For the 2011-2012 [[:en:fiscal year|fiscal year]], the Wikimedia Foundation expects to spend $28,281,000. The pie chart to the right shows planned expenditures for that year, based on pages 34 and 35 of the annual plan pdf. (The math and all work are my own, as are any errors.) Of course, in the real world (where prices vary and unexpected situations may arise), plans don't always pan out. On that same page range, you can see the difference between last year's plans and the final, actual expenditures. For one example, the biggest variance was in the project staff salaries, which were 20% less than anticipated. Rather than push to meet the plan, the Wikimedia Foundation decided to slow hiring in order to ensure that the staff members added were right for their roles. --[[User:Mdennis|Maggie Dennis]] 20:03, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
To put it briefly, your money pays for staff salaries, technology (servers, bandwidth and Internet hosting), the legal defense of the Foundation, and program activities around the world. For the 2011-2012 [[:en:fiscal year|fiscal year]], the Wikimedia Foundation expects to spend $28,281,000. The pie chart to the right shows planned expenditures for that year, based on pages 34 and 35 of the annual plan pdf. (The math and all work are my own, as are any errors.) Of course, in the real world (where prices vary and unexpected situations may arise), plans don't always pan out. On that same page range, you can see the difference between last year's plans and the final, actual expenditures. For one example, the biggest variance was in the project staff salaries, which were 20% less than anticipated. Rather than push to meet the plan, the Wikimedia Foundation decided to slow hiring in order to ensure that the staff members added were right for their roles. --[[User:Mdennis|Maggie Dennis]] 20:03, 15 September 2011 (UTC)



===Foundation: Is the Wikimedia Foundation financially sustainable?===
==Foundation: Is the Wikimedia Foundation financially sustainable?==


The community of donors (both individual and organizational) have been incredibly generous in helping to support the Wikimedia Foundation's work over the years. In the 2009-2010 [[:en:fiscal year|fiscal year]], donors contributed nearly $14.5 million in unrestricted donations (see [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/cc/FINAL_09_10From_KPMG.pdf pg. 3]). In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, that number rose to over $17.5 million in the first six months alone ([http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/d5/Jul-Dec%2710_Mid-year_financials.pdf pg. 1]). The Wikimedia Foundation does not, however, immediately ''spend'' all it gets. To be financially sustainable, a nonprofit organization must retain enough [[:en:Working capital|working capital]] to meet its program goals over the long term.
The community of donors (both individual and organizational) have been incredibly generous in helping to support the Wikimedia Foundation's work over the years. In the 2009-2010 [[:en:fiscal year|fiscal year]], donors contributed nearly $14.5 million in unrestricted donations (see [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/cc/FINAL_09_10From_KPMG.pdf pg. 3]). In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, that number rose to over $17.5 million in the first six months alone ([http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/d5/Jul-Dec%2710_Mid-year_financials.pdf pg. 1]). The Wikimedia Foundation does not, however, immediately ''spend'' all it gets. To be financially sustainable, a nonprofit organization must retain enough [[:en:Working capital|working capital]] to meet its program goals over the long term.

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