FAQ/en

Wikimedia Foundation - Frequently Asked Questions
Last revision: November 2010

Wikimedia community meeting in Poland in 2010

Wikimedia Foundation staff in 2009

Wikimedia Foundation servers

If I donate to Wikimedia, where does my money go?

To people and technology. Even though Wikipedia and its sister projects together reach Template:COMSCORE-UNIQUES million people every month, we employ only Template:STAFF-COUNT people; see our staff overview. Roughly half work on technology, a small team supports our public outreach and volunteer cultivation activities, and the remaining staff work in fundraising and administration. In addition, your support helps to pay for the technology infrastructure (servers and bandwidth) that keeps Wikipedia running and growing.

Fundamentally, the Wikimedia Foundation exists to support and grow the enormous network of volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia and its sister projects -- more than 100,000 people around the world.

In a nutshell, what is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is the world's largest and most popular encyclopedia. It's online, free to use for any purpose, and free of advertising. Wikipedia contains more than 17 million volunteer-authored articles in over Template:WP-EDITIONS-COUNT languages, and is visited by more than Template:COMSCORE-UNIQUES million people every month, making it the fifth most-popular site in the world.

It is a collaborative creation that has been added to and edited by millions of people during the past nine years: anyone can edit it, at any time. Wikipedia is the largest collection of shared knowledge in human history, and the people who support it are united by their love of learning, their intellectual curiosity, and their awareness that we know much more together, than any of us does alone.

Where can I find more financial information?

2008–2009 Annual Report

The 2008–2009 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report covers the previous fiscal year (July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009) with a look-ahead to the next. This is our second annual report. The Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report is a summary of the organization's financials, program activities, milestones and accomplishments.

Highlights include:

• Launch of Wikimedia's Usability Initiative
• Wikimedia joins the Creative Commons
• Wikimania conference in Alexandria, Egypt
• Wikimedia's open strategy planning process begins
• Successful fundraising and expansion of core operations

Download the 2008-2009 Annual Report:

• PDF version (2.0 MB)

Is the Wikimedia Foundation a charity?

Yes. The Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA. You can review our letter of tax-exemption and our financial reports and annual filings.

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. We are a non-profit that depends on your financial help to do that. Your donation directly supports some of the most popular collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's top five most-popular sites and the largest encyclopedia ever compiled in human history.

What are your plans? Where is this going?

As the organization's founder, Jimmy Wales, put it: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." That’s where it’s going — and we need your help to get there.

Every month, more than Template:COMSCORE-UNIQUES million people around the world use Wikipedia. It's available online, on your mobile device, on DVD, in books, and many other forms. We aspire to reach even more people, and to continually improve the quality of information that we provide. We've set five "big hairy audacious goals" for July 2015:

• Increase the total number of people served to 1 billion
• Increase the amount of information we offer in Wikipedia to 50 million articles
• Increase the percentage of material assessed as 'high' or 'very high' quality by 25%
• Increase the number of active editors to 200,000
• Double the percentage of female editors and the number of Global South editors to 37%

It will take us lots of hard work, experimentation and research to achieve these goals. Here are some of the concrete projects we're working on right now:

• We're continually making it easier to contribute knowledge. Earlier this year, we completed a first redesign of Wikipedia's user interface. We are also working on an improved media upload interface, and we are piloting new ways for readers to give feedback about article quality.
• Creating a central library of learning and training resources to recruit more contributors: teachers, professors, students, photographers, filmmakers, scientists, librarians, archivists, curators, hobbyists, and many others.
• Using the above resources, supporting Wikimedia's network of Template:CHAPTER-COUNT local chapters in the development of innovative on-the-ground programs in their geographies. For example, Wikimedia Indonesia ran a comprehensive multi-university writing competition supported with a small grant of the Wikimedia Foundation (more about the project), one of more than a dozen such grants to chapters around the world.
• Developing new technologies and processes for quality assurance that do not conflict with Wikimedia's fundamental openness. For the technically interested, this includes technologies for flagging edits and for detecting potentially problematic changes.
• Starting to develop a presence in high priority growth regions like India and Brazil. We will start by opening a very small office in India to begin catalyzing outreach and community efforts there.
• Building a rich dashboard of metrics to support the work of the Wikimedia movement. See our monthly report card and our statistics portal.

Finally, it is our mission to protect the work that has been done so far: to reduce the risk that disaster or technical failure could eliminate portions of our work, and to ensure that it is regularly copied in many places. We're not an excited start-up company that will fade away in two years -- we're in this for the long term.

How do you balance keeping Wikipedia open with making it more reliable?

We believe increased participation makes Wikipedia better. At the same time, we must maintain the tough standards that have made Wikipedia respected by scientists, academics, journalists, and foundations.

What is the Wikimedia Foundation?

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is the parent organization of various free-content projects, most notably Wikipedia, the award-winning online encyclopedia. Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia in January 2001 and created the Wikimedia Foundation in June 2003. From the beginning, we have existed for one reason: the free and open sharing of knowledge. We don’t sell information and we don’t accept advertising. Your donation makes our work possible. We bring the educational content from these projects to people in as many forms as possible. In particular, we help disadvantaged communities with limited connectivity to access and contribute free educational content.

We own more than 400 servers used to run our projects, along with all the associated domain names and trademarks. We support strategic software development on the MediaWiki software and related tools, which allow more people to participate and the existing volunteer community to work more effectively. This includes tools specifically related to ensuring high quality. We develop learning resources, support workshops and strive to think intelligently about other ways to bring in new contributors and to grow Wikimedia as an international movement for free knowledge.

In all this, we are supported by local chapters organized in many different countries.

Which projects do you support?

The Wikimedia Foundation supports Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia and one of the five most-visited websites world-wide. From the founding of Wikipedia in January 2001, and the incorporation of the Wikimedia Foundation in June 2003, our growth has been staggering. The English-language Wikipedia, our first project, has expanded to more than Template:EN-WP-COUNT articles today. All Wikipedia languages combined contain more than Template:ALL-WP-COUNT articles.

Besides Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation also supports:

• Wikimedia Commons, a media repository containing more than Template:COMMONS-MEDIA-COUNT freely usable images, videos, and sound files
• Wikibooks, a project to create free textbooks
• Wiktionary, a multilingual dictionary and thesaurus
• Wikisource, a library of source documents
• Wikinews, a citizen news website
• Wikiversity, an interactive learning platform
• Wikiquote, a collection of quotations
• Wikispecies, a directory of life on Earth

We lead and support the development of MediaWiki, the open source wiki software behind all our public websites. We help to organize outreach and community events to encourage people to contribute to our projects, and we provide downloadable offline copies and database archives of Wikipedia content.

More information may be found on the page about our projects.

How is the Wikimedia Foundation run?

The Wikimedia Foundation has a staff of Template:STAFF-COUNT, led by the Executive Director, Sue Gardner. The staff supports the work of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who contribute content to the Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is also supported by countless volunteers participating through committees, as interns, or on an ad hoc basis.

The Board of Trustees articulates the mission and vision of the Wikimedia Foundation, reviews and helps to develop long term plans, provides oversight, and supports the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising efforts. It is the ultimate organizational authority of the Wikimedia Foundation as defined in its bylaws. See Meetings for published Board minutes and Resolutions for published Board resolutions. The Board is partially elected from the community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. The Board is supported by an Advisory Board, chaired by Angela Beesley Starling.

We have an office, located in San Francisco, California (USA), where most of our employees are working. All board members and remaining staff work remotely.

We strive to operate highly transparently, and have published key policies and financial information.

How is the Wikimedia Foundation funded?

Wikimedia is funded primarily through donations from hundreds of thousands of individuals, but also through several grants and gifts of servers and hosting (see benefactors).

The Wikimedia Foundation receives donations from more than 50 countries around the world. The average donation is quite small, but their sheer numbers have ensured our success. People make contributions year-round, and once a year the Wikimedia Foundation makes a formal request for donations.

We are not considering advertising as a source of revenue.

The Wikimedia Foundation has 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. Donations made from other nations may also be tax deductible. See deductibility of donations for details. Click here for details on how to make a donation via PayPal, MoneyBookers or by postal mail. For all other types of donation, please contact us through donatewikimedia.org.

How much money are you hoping to raise?

The 2010-11 plan posits revenue of $20.4 million, a 28% increase over projected revenue of $15.9 million for 2009-10.

More details about our finances can be found in our financial reports. Here is our 2010-11 Plan (PDF), and here is the Questions and Answers page related to it.

Who else is supporting you in this goal?

Most of our funding comes from individuals -- people like you. We also receive grants from community and private foundations, as well as in-kind contributions from corporations. They can be seen on our Benefactors page.

Where can I learn more about your recent activities?

For the fiscal year 2008-09, please Download the 2008-2009 Annual Report: PDF version (2.0 MB)

If you want to keep up with Wikimedia events more regularly, we recommend the following sources:

• the Wikimedia Foundation blog
• Planet Wikimedia, which includes Wikimedia community blogs
• the Wikimedia Announcements mailing list, which includes announcements from chapters and community members

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, Moneybookers, bank transfer, or by sending a cheque to the Foundation. Our donation options support many (although not all) currencies.

Where do I send checks?

Send checks to:

Our preference is for checks in U.S. dollars, drawn on U.S. bank accounts. Checks 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.

Where do I send forms, letters or other materials to the Wikimedia Foundation?

Please send all correspondence, including Payroll Deduction applications and Matching Gifts forms, to our secure lockbox address:

Can I make a stock donation to the Wikimedia Foundation?

The Wikimedia Foundation accepts stock donations. You can make a donation by transferring stock from your brokerage to ours by providing your broker with our name, investment account number and DTCC clearing number.

Are my donations tax-deductible?

Please refer to the list of countries for the details of tax-deductibility.

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

If you donate by PayPal or credit card, you'll receive a tax receipt by e-mail, as long as your e-mail address was included with your donation. Donations by check over $50 will receive a tax receipt by mail, if you gave us your return address. You may also request a tax receipt for your donation by writing us at givingwikimedia.org (please include your contact information, the method you used to donate, and the amount of your donation).

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

Charities based in the United States, including the Wikimedia Foundation, are required to honor restrictions requested by donors. This means that if you specify your donation needs to be restricted for a specific use, we will either honor your request or return your donation. But before you decide to do that, please consider that unrestricted donations are much more useful for us. Every restriction imposes administrative overhead and planning costs, and increases internal complexity.

Why is there a minimum donation?

The minimum donation amount is $1. We receive small donations from people who don't have much money, and we are really, really grateful to those donors. Truly, if the gift is meaningful to you, it's meaningful to us. But, it's 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 dollar amount for their testing: we find a $1 minimum donation amount seems to deter them.

What can I do to help you spread the word?

Spread the word any way you can! Tell your friends and family. Tell them what Wikipedia means to you. Ask them if they use it and if so, what it means to them. Use this text as the signature file on the bottom of your emails:

We’ve created the greatest collection of shared knowledge in history. Help protect Wikipedia. Donate now: http://donate.wikimedia.org

What is your donor privacy policy?

We are serious about protecting the privacy rights of our donors. Please see our Donor Privacy Policy for our full details. In short, we do not share, sell, or trade your email address with anyone.

How can I contact the Foundation?

If you still have questions or concerns please feel free to contact us. For donation questions you can email donationswikimedia.org

For other questions see the Contact us page for more details.