Poll of Wikipedians concludes: Wikimedia fundraising emails are misleading

What annoys me the most is that I've been donating to Wikipedia for over a decade and I still got the plea message, but if I click that little X button I don't see it anymore. Big deal.

Joking aside, a person in the US agreeing to earn $300,000 rather than $350,000 – to a very large extent off the value created by volunteer labour, and off the public's donations – is not what I would call "charity" or a "sacrifice".

I would remind you that some of this money is raised in India, South Africa and Latin America – by telling people there money is needed to "keep Wikipedia online" for them.

Now, a real sacrifice by an American is when a senior with $18 to his name promises to donate to Wikimedia as soon as his social security check clears, as this fellow did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_de...

I wish he hadn't been pressured into making that promise!

Many of the small donations funding these salaries do actually come from people for whom donating that small amount really is a sacrifice. These phrases, about how it's "awkward" to ask, how Wikipedia has "no choice but to turn to you", they speak to them most of all, because they can relate to this situation.

This is from an unpaid Wikipedia volunteer on the Volunteer Response Team: "I can't go into the specifics, but as a VRT agent I've received numerous emails from people on limited incomes who are donating money they need because they believe that Wikipedia is in trouble and that they need to give money to keep it online. I'm absolutely disgusted by this, and I think it will catch up to us in the long-run, as people won't want to give once they realize how deceptive these campaigns are."

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fundraisin...

So, please, if it's a question of brownie points for "charity" and "sacrifice", these executives are hardly at the front of the queue.

There is not even any good reason for many of these staff positions to go to people in the US. Most of these are remote jobs. They could just as easily be done by someone in India, Poland or Singapore, and at a fraction of the cost.

Let the people who are after that $1M-dollar job go to a for-profit company. Wikipedia doesn't need them.

Especially when said donations were donated under the impression they'd be used specifically towards the charity's cause, rather than inflating a c-suite executive's bonus for the umptieth time.

Wikipedia is sustained by the volunteers, not the corporate bureaucrats. They existed before the c-level salary increases, but might flee as peak corporatism occurs.

The Wikimedia Foundation also publishes audited financial statements and a plan for the coming year. All of this is available here [1], which is the first result when you Google "wikipedia financials".

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

No one who “works” for the non profit gets paid reasonably except the executives, who are paid exorbitant wages.

Of course they are required to file tax returns with executive salaries that are public! Why would you not check it? This is how cynicism destroys a civilization. People let institutions die because someone told them they were already dead.

>The line, in some ways, is thin between a non-profit and a for-profit organization

No it isn't, it's very clear cut. To people in the industry, there's no connection between salaries and "profit". That's just not what the word means to them. Random people on the internet get confused about this because they (definitely not only you) don't have any specific idea of what "profit" means.

In fact, "profit" doesn't even mean "having extra money after paying expenses and salaries" in the non-profit business.

At a non-profit, when they have more money at the end of the year than at the beginning, it's called a "surplus" rather than a "profit", and it doesn't have to be paid out to pesky "shareholders" so the organization just keeps it and does whatever with it next year.

Instead of a triad of directors, executives and shareholders (theoretically) in charge, the directors and executives run it (or fight over it).

Yes, they are legally obligated to disclose their finances. OP’s point was it should be part of their fundraising message too.

"WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever"

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio...

(Two candidates "supported" the statement; one "strongly supported" it. A fourth opposed the statement, but added: "I do feel that the online campaign can be improved. See videos for more." In the videos, she said: "The one thing that I think we can improve is our on-wiki campaign. It is sometimes too aggressive to my taste.")

I do love the place. It is profoundly human and the result of a tremendous amount of goodwill that has flowed into it and built what it is. But it's not perfect; and that is part of its appeal.

The vast majority is salaries, not operating costs.

https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-t...

"The vast majority of Wikimedia’s value to ordinary people – the website we know and use – costs the firm about 30 percent of their $112.5 million operating budget ($33.75 million) to maintain according to Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia."

Software developers in the Bay Area are more expensive than other fields.

"And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement"."

The reason given for wanting to raise more funds and "maximize revenue" (Wikimedia had a $50 million surplus in 2020/2021, $88 million if you include endowment growth ...) was not a lack of staff or resources for maintaining Wikipedia, but the "Strategic Direction" and the desire "to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030" (which involves Wikimedia becoming "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge").

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/...

Frankly, a lot of the new employees appear to me to be producing a lot of high-faluting words – about the Universal Code of Conduct, the Human Rights Policy, the UN, knowledge equity, movement strategy, and whatnot. Around 50 people just work on Fundraising. I wish they prioritised the things volunteers are asking for more, but their sights often appear to be focused on far loftier aims.

In that vein, they recently created a $4.5 million fund to support organisations completely unrelated to both Wikipedia and Wikimedia:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund

And all these things may be fine things to do, but if they are fine things, then tell donors about them.

As for what Lisa meant, I genuinely don't know what she meant. That's why I asked above. If you've spoken to her, then fine, I'll take that on board.