As always, the Foundation is richer than the year before. But it wants to grow, and grow, and grow ... something a Wikipedia volunteer once described as an “infinite loop of ‘we should do more things, because we can raise money’ – ‘we need more money, because we want to do more things’.
There have always been discussions in Wikipedia’s volunteer community about this – about how much money to raise, and about the ethics of making readers believe there is an acute financial emergency:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2012-Janu... https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2012-Janu...
Recently, a Wikimedia manager in the “Advancement” (= Fundraising) department mentioned that there would be “nothing intrinsically outrageous” about “an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars”:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...
The Wikimedia Foundation is arguably well on its way, with revenue and assets regularly increasing by 1,000 percent or so – and more sometimes – over the course of a decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...
Here are some of the latest figures: In the 2020/21 financial year, the Wikimedia Foundation exceeded its own original revenue goal for the year by about $47 million dollars, taking over $154 million rather than the $108 million planned at the start of the year:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimed...
The precise figure reported is "$154,763,121 USD from over 7.7 million donors".
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2020-21_Report#K...
Moreover, the Wikimedia Endowment (which is completely separate from the Foundation, and not included in the Foundation's audited accounts or Form 990 reporting) reached the $100 million mark in June of this year, five years earlier than planned:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2020-21_Report#W...
In the current July 2021 – June 2022 financial year, the Wikimedia Foundation aims to take $42 million more than the $108 million goal it set itself at the beginning of the previous financial year:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...
That is a planned increase of nearly 40%. For an historic overview of Wikimedia revenue, expenses and net assets see this graphic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi...
As always, people should know that the Foundation’s paid staff does not write or curate any of the content found on Wikipedia – this is all done by unpaid volunteers. Wikimedia’s medium-term strategy (never spelled out on the fundraising banners) is here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/...
There’s actually no mention of Wikipedia in that.