I think this is just the organizational equivalent of having a buffer rather than living "paycheck to paycheck".
When Wikipedia has cash reserves a hundred times its yearly expenses, I'll listen.
When Wikipedia has cash reserves a hundred times its yearly expenses, I'll listen.
At the moment, they have €250M in assets, and a further €100M endowment. Their assets have increased by double-digit millions every year for a decade.
In my opinion, the yearly fundraising campaign is highly disingenuous. Basically, they are begging for money, claiming it is to "keep Wikipedia running". In reality, Wikipedia-the-website is an unlimited cash cow used to fund tangentially related pet projects at the Wikimedia Foundation. In 2008, the expenses were €5.6M. 2021 expenses are up to €112M - and I can guarantee page views did not increase 20-fold!
At the moment, hosting costs are about €3M / year. Let's round that up to €10M for sysadmin and development salaries, and they currently have enough money to keep Wikipedia running for 35 years.
I'd be more than happy to donate to keep Wikipedia itself alive, but at the moment donating money to them is basically the same as throwing money in a bottomless pit.
It’s extremely misleading at best, given the numbers you cite.
Only in Sweden where I live they have greatly contributed to freedom of panorama and ensuring public domain material remains in the public domain when digitized. They work towards things like these all across the world.
That rounding up makes no sense and is unrealistic.
> In 2007, the year Wikipedia first became a top-ten website serving the world, the Foundation reported total annual expenses of $2 million.
> The Wikimedia Foundation is richer than ever. Its assets and reserves [...] have increased fivefold since 2015, and stood at an estimated $400 million at the end of March 2022.
I'm sure the "mission" has expanded and costs are higher these days, but 200x baseline costs is pretty comfy.
The vast majority is salaries, not operating costs.