Comment by akolbe
3 years ago
The question to me is what donors are told. The Wikimedia Foundation built a $100 million endowment in five years, half the time it had budgeted:
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...
It's gone through a phase of planned, aggressive growth of its headcount. Its salary costs have increased tenfold over a decade:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
As you can see on that page, individual executives' salaries have risen by 20, 30 percent in the space of two years. And all the while people are told the Wikimedia Foundation needs money "to keep Wikipedia online", or "to protect Wikipedia's independence".
No. If you want to grow your headcount, tell people why. If you want ten times as much money from the public ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
... then say what you are going to do with it. Don't hide behind "keeping Wikipedia online".
> No. If you want to grow your headcount, tell people why. If you want ten times as much money from the public ...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
> ... then say what you are going to do with it. Don't hide behind "keeping Wikipedia online".
Fair. I'm with you there. I would like clearer documentation of Wikimedia's organizational breakdown and where they are spending that budget.
I would also like to see public audited statements for their endowment, now holding about $115M.
Nobody has ever seen one in all the six years the Endowment has existed.