Every now and then I'll get an email from someone higher up in Wikipedia asking for a donation. I don't really mind a tenner but I don't know if it pads the pockets of corporate management or actual contributors. Also, are they really short of money or is this tugging at emotional strings a play at something else? I wish Wikipedia survives but there's a lot of projects I need to donate to and I have a budget.
Lucky for you the wikimedia foundation files annual reports https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/
I think this is the latest one available.
As to whether they need your money or not I’m a bit conflicted. They have raised and spent more and more money every year. They have a lot of money and some have argued they spend it poorly.
On the whole though, besides asking for donations, they have maintained their goal of being ad free. If you’ve ever used a fan wiki for a video game or hobby you have likely experienced how bad a wiki larded down with ads can be.
I think for myself as someone that has worked as a software engineer for my entire life building out massive infrastructure that is on a similar scale to Wikipedia, I don’t really know how they justify such high development spend when the tech isn’t really evolving very much. I’m sure it’s not cheap to host, so that spend is fine by me, but I’m not sure what all they are building. That doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile, I just have a hard time imagining it.
I would encourage you to look at numbers and decide if they make sense to you. Also people have written on the subject, so some googling will likely bring you to more opinionated pieces than my own.
I've been a funding member of the Wikimedia Foundation for over a decade. I have looked at their finances several times before and during financing them.
As with a lot of similar non-profits, a considerable amount of donations does not go into "running the servers". You have to judge this by yourself, but they don't embezzle any money and there is a reasonable bottom line. Wikipedia continuously helps tons of people, and the people who run the operation enable that.
You can download a full dump of Wikipedia any day. Compared to other lying companies, they have been true on their promises for some time.
Of all the $1 I could spend in a year, the one I give to Wikipedia is probably the least wrong invested, and that $1 actually already makes a difference
It definitely makes a difference, and putting money into Wikipedia is a great use of funds. The reason I asked the question is because I'm not well off, but I still like to donate to projects from time to time. This means I have a limited (and strict budget), and was wondering if they need my tenner badly enough to send marketing emails over it. Because I'd like to donate to people who actually really need the money, and Wikipedia will do just fine for some time without my money going to them.
I’m not well off
Do NOT donate. Believe in yourself. Believe you will one day be well off. At that point in time feel free to pay your "backlog" of payments. Write down todays date somewhere and "start a tab".
Wikipedia will not help you when you need it most. Take care of yourself first... then donate.
Never donate if you don't have the money. You can put a imaginary bill in an imaginary jar and turn those imaginary bills in real ones once you get better off.
Thanks for caring but care for yourself first.
Makes sense. If you're contributing less than $1000 monthly to anything, you're not making a difference. If you want dedicated people to be on the receiving end, who also do a great job, every single person will cost thousands each month. Wikimedia is literally spending millions each year.
Honestly, don't try to hunt for the "best" spot to contribute your exact amount of spare money to, with the hope of having the largest possible impact. It won't happen. Treat a good friend to some food instead.
If you really feel like you already got some value out of a service in the past, give what you can, without limiting yourself financially in the process. If you feel like you don't have the $1 to spend for Wikipedia, don't spend it. Don't guilt trip yourself into donations ever. Your donation today will not prevent a service from turning into shit tomorrow. Pay for what you got
Thanks man. I would much rather give my time than my money for OSS projects, but I have a lot to learn and do not match up the quality of contributions needed in said projects. I'll do what I can.
I fully agree with not limiting themselves financially whether it's 1,10,100 etc. Their aim is to bring knowledge in all languages to even the poorest parts of the world. If some Lemmy user's bank account is one of the poorest parts of the world right now, lol...I mean only "you" know how much money you can stand to give while still living comfortably and being entertained in life.
I have to take small disagreement with the money contribution not making a difference though. It's the flip side of the same coin that tells people it's find if they don't vote cause their one vote won't make a difference. The hole in the argument is that we don't vote alone, and we don't donate alone. The specific attitude "my vote won't make a difference" actually costs millions of votes every year, just like "my $20 won't make a difference" could cause millions of dollars of losses.
But anyway, separate argument from the situation here as our Lemmiford here sounds like they're in saving mode till things look up.
I get that, I really do, and I honestly believe you have exactly the right idea.
But on the other hand, you have to realize that not all of the money purely goes to enabling knowledge sharing with Wikimedia. This is not an election, it's a company, non-profit or for-profit doesn't really matter. There are still people paying off business expenses from your donations.
I fully understand the necessity of this, but you might just feel better if your $5 literally bought someone a meal or if it paid for a fraction of a business flight to promote Wikimedia.
Totally agree, the right to choose how best to spend your own charitable donations isn't something I'd ever infringe on.
No, it doesn't.
The Wikimedia projects are made by volunteers, almost none of the money goes to actually making the content. Some of it does go into keeping the servers running or into software development.
And some of it goes into expanding an ever-increasing bureaucracy, which is tasked among other things with enforcing intransparent "global bans" or lighter sanctions against contributors the WMF doesn't like (opinions of the editing community don't matter at all on these). If they had less money, perhaps they would lay off some of their trust and safety team and not catch some people who are making useful contributions by evading global bans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
There are so many more worthy free knowledge organizations to donate to: OpenStreetMap, FOSS projects (e.g. Software in the Public Interest), even Miraheze.
They seem to give a lot of cash away to other organisations https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579776106034757633.html (Their response is here for fairness.)
Whatever you think of the tertiary organisations, it seems like you're better off donating directly to a cause that needs it, rather than funding a bunch of middle managers to give it to someone else.
Wikipedia makes most of its money from donations, with some money coming from other sources like commercial API access. It consistently raises more money than it spends and has been building an endowment. However, that income mainly comes from the fundraising drives.
Wikipedia has an endowment, but it isn't enough to run the website for more than a few years.
In terms of expenses, the largest expense is in having staff to run the various websites and foundation. Charity auditors rank the foundation highly on expenses, so the foundation is likely not overpaying staff.
Wikipedia needs donations to survive, but it isn't struggling. If you feel like you have better things to donate to, it is probably ok for now.
no, they are critical to the US propaganda network which means they'll get funding if they actually ever need it. same w/ stuff like falun gong media or anarchist magazines (cointelpro).
They rely on donations, that part is correct. Are they in constant financial need so they are forced to ask users so often to donate? No, they are not.
Also keep in mind that while the server and developing costs of Wikipedia are one area of spending, Wikimedia spends money on a host of projects. Some of them you would probably consider more important than others.
Yeah I need to look at the list and check if there's something important for me in there
Wikipedia will keep running, even if you don’t donate. The Wikimedia foundation (which runs Wikipedia) gets a lot of donations and fund a ton of other stuff apart from Wikipedia, so you’re donation will rather have a chance to decide if these keep running.
I need to look up what else they sponsor in case there's something important for me there
They set themselves up that way. They do so saying that if they were properly sponsored, the "sponsors" could influence their bias, as if they didn't succumb anyways.
I made an account and did a one time donation for $2.50. This removes the website donation banner. As long as I'm logged in, I do not see those messages. I get an email about donating once a year, possibly twice. Infrequently enough to be unsure of how often it has happened. If I ever see the donation banner on the website, I know I am logged out. So I can't answer your query about the corporate aspect but I can say that the heartstring tugging can easily be solved with a one time donation for a small amount. You can do a custom amount for a donation so theoretically it could be for $0.01 or your lowest fiat equivalent.
