Donations FAQ

Why should I donate to the Wikimedia Foundation?

The job of the Wikimedia Foundation is to provide easy access to information, for people all over the world—free of charge, and free of advertising. As a non-profit, it is dependent on your help to do that. Your donations directly support some of the most popular collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's top ten most popular websites and the largest encyclopedia ever compiled in human history.

What do you plan to do with my donation?

We need your support to keep our projects online: to pay for servers, bandwidth, staff salaries, office space, and other necessities. To see how your donations are spent, you can review our Annual Plan for the Fiscal Year 2008-2009.

We also want to focus more attention on program development, particularly in communities that have little or no access to educational resources. Here are just a few ways in which we put your donations to good use:

• Wikipedia Academy: Last year we held two Wikipedia Academies in South Africa with the hope of increasing the number of Wikipedians contributing in African languages. The Academies are public events designed to encourage people to write for Wikipedia. The Academies are usually dedicated to a single subject area (for instance, mathematics) or a particular language that is underrepresented on Wikipedia. This year, academies will be held, with the help of our local chapter organizations, in Berlin, Germany (June 20-21), Wrocław, Poland (September), and Lund, Sweden (November 12-13). more information

• Quality Initiatives: The Wikimedia Foundation and the communities of all Wikimedia projects are deeply committed to developing educational content of the highest quality and reliability. We are supporting the development of quality assurance and testing technologies, and the development of social and technical interfaces with expert communities. more information

• Improvements to User-Friendliness. Wikipedia and its sister projects are the result of the work of thousands of volunteers across the world. By keeping the barriers to participation low, we have been able to build some of the largest knowledge repositories in history. But contributing to Wikipedia is still harder than it needs to be: technical barriers exclude large segments of the population who have knowledge to share. By systematically improving the usability of our projects, and broadening the ways in which people can contribute, we want to make Wikipedia as easy to participate in, as it is to read.

• Education in Developing Countries: Educational programs in developing countries use our content in phenomenal ways. Our material is available around the world on DVDs and books, and installed on low-cost laptops through the One Laptop Per Child program (see the WikiBrowse project). As an organization, we need the capacity to work with third parties in the development of and distribution of offline versions of educational content. We also provide downloadble offline copies and database archives of Wikipedia content.

• Supporting Language Diversity: Wikipedia editions exist in more than 250 languages. In many of them, only a few reference sources are available, such as Maori (an Eastern Polynesian language spoken in New Zealand), Swahili (a Bantu language used in sub-Saharan Africa), Upper Sorbian (a Slavic language spoken in eastern Germany), and Basque (spoken in north-central Spain and southwestern France). We want to give every language community on Earth the opportunity to create its own encyclopedia, and we plan to actively support outreach efforts and software localization work to reach people speaking all languages.

• Building a global movement for free knowledge: The international Wikimedia community, supported by local chapter organizations in more than 15 countries, is united in a commitment to bringing free educational content to the world. There is no other comparable social movement in the world today, and your donation will help us to grow and thrive.

To keep up with our progress, please take a look at the official Wikimedia Foundation blog. And, to experiment with the latest technologies from our open source laboratories, please visit Wikimedia Labs.

How do I donate?

To donate, please visit our fundraising page. You can donate using any major credit card (including VISA, MasterCard, Discover or American Express), PayPal, bank transfer, bitcoin, or by sending a cheque to the Foundation. Our donation options support most (although not all) currencies.

Where do I send cheques?

Send cheques to:

Our preference is for cheques in U.S. dollars, drawn on U.S. bank accounts. Cheques in currencies other than U.S. dollars, or from bank accounts outside the U.S., can be very expensive for us to process, which reduces the value of your gift. If you do not have a U.S. bank account, you can maximize the value of your donation by giving via Paypal or wire transfer.

What other options exist to allow me to donate?

Alternative ways to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation include:

• setting up an automatic monthly gift
• sending a check via regular mail
• making a stock donation
• using your employer's matching gift program
• making a Legacy Gift to ensure Wikipedia is around for generations to come
• donating Bitcoin

Why does the Wikimedia Foundation accept Bitcoin?

The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money, while striving to provide as many methods of donating as possible. Our donors indicated that they were interested in supporting us through Bitcoin, so after some investigation, we set up a method to accept those donations. See our blog post for more information about it.

Are my donations tax-deductible?

The Wikimedia Foundation is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, so donations are tax-deductible in the United States (tax ID number 20-0049703). Canadian citizens may also deduct their contribution on any income earned in the United States. Our tax exempt status varies in other countries. Please refer to our Tax Deductibility Guidelines for more information.

Donors from the U.K. can made a Gift Aid eligible donation to the Wikimedia Foundation through the UK Fund for Charities. If you donate through this platform, you will receive a receipt directly from the UKFC.

If I make a donation, how do I get my tax receipt?

All donors who give through our online donation flow will receive a tax receipt via email. Depending on the payment method used, it can take 1 - 7 business days for the receipt to arrive. Donors using an offline method such as sending a cheque will receive their receipt to the mailing address provided with the donation, unless they provide us with an email address. Please note when using offline methods that we recommend retaining a copy of your bank's confirmation of the donation for your records as well.

Can I give you a targeted or restricted donation to be used for something very specific?

The Wikimedia Foundation prefers unrestricted donations, so we can direct your donation to the area where the funds are most needed. Every restriction imposes administrative overhead and planning costs, and increases internal complexity. We accept restricted gifts on a case-by-case basis only. If you are interested in making a restricted gift, please contact Rosie Lewis, Development Associate, at rlewis@wikimedia.org.

Why is there a minimum donation?

We receive small donations from people who don't have much money, and we are really, really grateful to those donors.

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for people to use donation mechanisms such as ours to test stolen credit cards to see if they work. Those people typically use a very small amount for their testing: a $1 minimum donation amount seems to deter them.

If I can’t afford to donate, or don’t want to, what else can I do to support the Foundation?

There are many ways to show your support. Your time is just as important as a monetary contribution. For instance, you can teach a friend to edit Wikipedia or upload some of your photos to Commons under a free content license.

What does the Wikimedia Foundation do to ensure that my personal information is protected?

We are serious about protecting the privacy rights of our donors. Please see our Donor Privacy Policy.

What is your refund policy?

If for any reason you wish to have your donation refunded, please contact us via email at donatewikimedia.org. We will need the following information in order to process your refund:

• Date of donation (All refund requests must be made within 90 days of donation)

• Amount donated (Donations above USD $10,000 are considered major donations and are subject to the applicable grant agreement between the Foundation and the donor)

• Full name

• Payment method used (credit card, bank transfer, E-wallet, ...)

• Country of origin

• Reason for the refund

Please note that some payment methods may not support refunds, or require refunds to be made through the payment method (card) utilised, so additional information may be required to process your refund. All refunds will be processed as quickly as possible, but processing times may vary depending on the payment method.

We can only refund Bitcoin donations in Bitcoin. Because we do not store Bitcoins, refunds will be calculated based on the U.S. Dollar amount we received via instant exchange at the time of the donation, using our payment processor's Bitcoin sell rate when the refund is issued. The Wikimedia Foundation is not responsible for any change in value based on fluctuating exchange rates.

What can I do to help you spread the word?

Spread the word any way you can! Tell your friends and family. Put buttons and banners on your blog. Use this text as the sig file on the bottom of your e-mails:

Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today:
http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

How much money are you hoping to raise?

The 2014-15 plan posits revenue of $58.5 million from a 2013-14 projection of $50.1 million.

More details about our finances can be found in our financial reports. Here is our 2014-15 Plan (PDF), and here is the Questions and Answers page related to it.

Where can I find more financial information?

The Wikimedia Foundation 2012–13 annual report covers the fiscal year of July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013. Now in its sixth edition, the Foundation's annual report celebrates the Foundation's first extraordinary decade, and shares some of the voices of the tens of thousands of people who make the Wikimedia movement possible.

The 2014-15 Annual Plan is our budget for the current fiscal year. It contains a summary of our strategic goals, financial details on spending and revenue, and detailed explanations and risk analysis.

Click the images below to download copies of our Annual Reports or our Annual Plan.

2012–2013 Annual Report
Download the 2012–13 Annual Report: PDF version (2 MB)	Download the 2014–15 Annual Plan: PDF version (517 KB) Annual Plan questions and answers