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Ask HN: Is Wikipedia running out of money?

52 points by butterNaN ↗ HN
I have observed the language they are using to ask for donations has become increasingly pleading, borderline begging. I am a frequent donor, but I haven't logged into Wikipedia account on my mobile. Every time I open any article on mobile, it shows a popup asking me to donate. Nowadays, it has even started showing a counter of how many 'free' articles I have read so far. Is Wikimedia foundation destitute? Why are they pushing to get capital so fervently? Are people who handle the money just looking to make themselves rich?

29 comments

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detaro
> Is Wikimedia foundation destitute?

No. If you search on HN, there's big discussions of this every year.

> Why are they pushing to get capital so fervently?

Because it works, and they'll find something to spend the money on.

jstx1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

Every year they raise more than they spend and their total assets are equal to about a year and a half of spending. It doesn't look like they're running out, or like they're overstepping with the fundraising; it all seems quite reasonable.

perl4ever
It appears according to their 2019-2020 report, that they spend about $2.4 million on "Internet hosting" compared to total revenue of nearly $130 million. That's under 2%.

They spend about twice as much on donation processing as they do on Internet hosting.

Some non-profits split their activities, so that they can tell donors that their money goes entirely towards grants and such, while administration comes out of a self-sustaining nest egg that was funded by a particular large donor or coalition.

This makes it clear that keeping the lights on is separate from the mission, and that there is a cap on overhead.

perl4ever
To be clear, per the report, after salaries, the biggest chunk of expenses seems to be awards and grants, and they may be doing significant good in the world for all I know.

But I don't think the appeals really make it clear that's what they crave money for. I assume it's largely out of expediency, because visitors necessarily understand the value of Wikipedia and likely don't have a clue about the grants that are made.

akolbe
That's right. But they end up asking for five or ten times what the Wikipedia platform would actually cost to maintain, and at that point you can ask whether it's crossing the line to dishonesty. People think they are making sure Wikipedia stays online, but are in fact funding something completely different.

They should say what they want the money for. Not least so there is scrutiny of these plans for Wikimedia to become "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge".

Dylan16807
It makes sense compared to spending. But that only makes it reasonable if the spending is reasonable.
GauntletWizard
And it's clearly not. Wikimedia Foundation has consistently grown it's spending with the income, and they've had many badly failed projects that are up years worth of funding, such as their VisualEditor program, which should be taught in software engineering classes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualEditor

akolbe
They are also lording it more and more over the volunteers who are writing the actual articles. The huge influx of money over the past decade or so attracts a corporate mindset that has very little to do with the volunteer culture that actually built Wikipedia.

People don't realize that Wikipedia actually existed BEFORE the Wikimedia Foundation which does the fundraising and collects the money today.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
GauntletWizard
Yeah, Wikipedia was useful at least a full year before Wikimedia Foundation even existed.
errcorrectcode
I worked at a PacNN/Ivy type university with a gigabuck+ endowment. They always cried poverty during recessions and did arbitrary, across-the-board cuts to "tighten the belt" when they were wasting absurds amounts of money elsewhere but cutting useful things and people arbitrarily too.
supertrope
In the Federal government this is nicknamed the Washington Monument effect. Cut the most popular services first when the budget is being negotiated. No organization is going to admit to bloat.
perl4ever
You can, and some organizations do, segregate administration from other activities, so that the former has secure funding that's independent of ordinary donors.

Maybe not everybody can do this at all times, but over several years, with significant revenue coming in, it seems like a feasible and worthy goal.

akolbe
How many of these organizations achieved the financial growth the Wikimedia Foundation has achieved by crying poverty?

NPR and PSB also cry poverty, but their budget is relatively stable. They take much the same money each year. The Wikimedia Foundation, on the other hand, has consistently doubled its revenue every two to five years – while crying poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

seattle_spring
It's not too different than the language used in mailers I receive from other non-profits. I think it's just a strategy that creates urgency and emotions in users. I assume it works or else no one would do it, because it's really annoying to me.
akolbe
The wording on the fundraising banners is subject to elaborate A/B testing. Recently, for example, they reported that

'A simple, yet effective phrase that we were surprised to see resonate with readers worldwide was simply asking readers not to “scroll away” from or “scroll past” the fundraising message in the banner.'

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2019-20_Report#O...

They call it "resonate"; the other day I saw a guy on Twitter saying that phrase in particular made him think they were about to close down (though he followed that with a "lmao" ...)

cm2012
Wikipedia itself, the website that constitutes 99% of the value the Wikimedia organization provides, costs very little to run, it's like 20% of their budget. The rest is wasteful projects run by a bloated org.
akolbe
Here are some facts and figures, with sources for your reference, in proper Wikipedia style.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikipedia platform (but does not write or curate the content, a bit like YouTube provides the platform, but users provide the content), is constantly looking for revenue growth and very successful in that endeavor.

They took $154 million in 2020/21, exceeding their own original revenue year goal of $108 million by $46 million:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimed...

They built a $100 million endowment in five years, half the time anticipated:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2020-21_Report#W...

In 2021/22, they are aiming to take $150 million; that is almost a 40% increase over the previous year's goal of $108 million:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...

The Wikimedia Foundation's VP of Engineering and Development said in 2013 that Wikimedia's mission would be sustainable on $10+ million p.a.:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...

Today a Wikimedia fundraising manager thinks a billion a year would not be too much:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

The top fundraising manager's salary increased by 50% in four years, to $252k plus $33k "other" compensation in 2019 (the latest figure available):

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

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200...

The wording on the fundraising banners has always been controversial with the unpaid volunteers who write the articles, with the Wikimedia Foundation accused of manipulative tactics or outright lying to the public:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12...

They have never been struggling financially, but have always wanted to grow their organisation. They have beaten their own revenue record every year of their existence and added over 500 paid staff since they first became a top-ten website.

For further details see the following article:

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...

akolbe
The Wikimedia Foundation has released its 2020/21 audited financial statements.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...

Total assets (p. 2): $240 million (not counting over $100 million in separate Wikimedia Endowment).

Increase in net assets over previous year (p. 3): $51 million

Total support and revenue in 2020/21 (p. 3): $163 million

przemub
That's why I donate only to my local Wikimedia chapter. They are a separate organisation which does not swim in money and they spend it sensibly.
throwawaysea
I feel like their language has always been desperate. Maybe they are trying new approaches because the old ones have grown tired. Personally, after a long history of donating to them, I stopped simply because the quality of the content has sunk so far due to all the political warfare on the Talk pages. Given even the founder thinks Wikipedia has become badly biased, maybe it isn’t so bad for them to come under hard times and for other competitors to pop up: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
BizarroLand
I read that they experimented with non-desperate methods of fundraising and it decimated their income, but I don't remember where I read that.
akolbe
That may well be true. But they are currently taking 15 times the annual amount they said they needed in 2013 to sustain their mission, and they would actually – literally – like to take 100 times the amount they said in 2013 was enough (see links above). The sky is the limit.

They feel they should do things because they can raise money from Wikipedia, and then feel they should raise more money so they can do more. Meanwhile, salaries go up, and more and more paid staff are hired to create an ever-expanding bureaucracy that's quite removed from Wikipedia's volunteer culture.

What you have here is a very clear case of mission creep. However, this change in mission is not reflected in the fundraising banners. The banners – as ever – give the impression that the Wikimedia Foundation is short of money for keeping Wikipedia, the one project everybody cares about, up and running.

So there is a complete loss of transparency now. People think the mission is the same as it's ever been: they donate because they think money is needed to keep Wikipedia going. In fact, they're not funding what they think they are funding.

ehPReth
I wish adblockers would take care of these banners
akolbe
You can register a Wikipedia account and then block them in your preferences.