The fundraising banners have started again, asking people “to defend Wikipedia’s independence”. This may sound like the Wikimedia Foundation is struggling to ke

The fundraising banners have started again, asking people “to defend Wikipedia’s independence”. This may sound like the Wikimedia Foundation is struggling to keep Wikipedia up and running, but there is no financial emergency – on the contrary. 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-January/071150.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2012-Janu... https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2012-January/071172.html 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@lists.wikimedia.org/message/MBLZ5R6SGOWU53CGTEKYOCHVOZ7YY74B/ 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_statistics 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:Wikimedia_Foundation_fourth_quarter_2020-2021_tuning_session_-_Advancement.pdf&page=12 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#Key_Stats 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#Wikimedia_Endowment 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-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2021-2022#Budget 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/File:WMF_Support_and_Revenue,_Expenses_and_Net_Assets_at_Year_End.jpg 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/2017#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/... There’s actually no mention of Wikipedia in that.