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I've been complaining about the fundraising messaging since I was employed by Wikimedia (I left around 10 years ago). We used to have flamewars in the staff ema

I've been complaining about the fundraising messaging since I was employed by Wikimedia (I left around 10 years ago). We used to have flamewars in the staff email lists about the messaging being deceiving. The reason they use the messaging is because it works, and they want to keep their fundraising timeline short, because it's also more effective when it's short. I'd really like for them to use more honest messaging. That said, I think a lot of the general rhetoric here related to Wikimedia is off. Wikimedia actually uses its funds quite efficiently, especially in comparison to other non-profits. They pay below market rate for salaries, primarily recruiting their staff from within the community. Like most non-profits they rely on people who are willing to take less salary because they love the cause. Also, a large percentage of their staff works fully remote, which helps keep costs down. Sadly, the poor executive pay tends to lead to absolutely mediocre leadership. I'd really like to see them increase the executive pay enough to hire qualified leaders. They have an endowment, but the point of an endowment is to be able to continue running even if they aren't able to fundraise. They don't and can't live off of it. They do need donations, and the vast majority of their funds come from individual donations (not whales, as some here are suggesting), and primarily from small donation amounts. The funds aren't solely to maintain the sites, but if you want them to continue existing, they can't solely spend money to maintain. They need ways to recruit new editors, and a lot of the spending being complained about here is being used to diversity the editor community, which is necessary for growth. There also seems to be a lot of misinformation around how much it costs to maintain the sites. To maintain them, you need to pay for hosting, the hardware, and most importantly, the employees. Folks seem to be leaving out the salary costs. You also can't just consider engineers. Legal is a critical part of the organization. Also, you can't run an organization without HR, accounting, internal IT, etc. Most of the salary costs are necessary to maintain the sites.

akolbe 4y ago
The salary bill has more than doubled in five years, from $31,713,961 to $67,857,676. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries#Total_salaries_per_financial_statements https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie... This wasn't "necessary to maintain the sites"; US inflation averaged 2% during that period. Moreover, "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." Source: https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-ties-to-big-tech https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-t... Also see the comments from a Wikimedia executive quoted above about how the Wikimedia Foundation's "working group on Revenue Streams" picked as its first guiding question how to "maximize revenue for the movement". A vernacular translation of how to "maximize revenue for the movement" would be "How to get as much money from Wikipedia readers as possible."
- ryan_lane 4y ago
  The number of employees has nearly doubled in five years, which is why the cost of salaries has increased. WMF is consistently understaffed, so hiring is necessary for maintaining the sites. Note that when I say maintain, that I consider improvements to be part of maintenance, because part of maintaining the sites is keeping them modern, and supporting the community with necessary features. The salaries have also increased over that period of time, but US inflation averaged 2% per year, not in total. Also, WMF has historically drastically underpaid employees, and their current salaries are definitely closer to (but still considerably lower than) industry standards. The quote you're using is the cost of the sites, not including the salaries, which is exactly the misinformation I'm trying to correct. It's absolutely inaccurate in the way you're using it. The revenue streams they're talking about is the enterprise API thing, which is basically just charging major users of the API for their cost. Your interpretation of this is needlessly misleading.
  - akolbe 4y ago
    I'll repeat that quote from the WMF executive above: "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/2017#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity 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 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.

akolbe 4y ago

The salary bill has more than doubled in five years, from $31,713,961 to $67,857,676. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries#Total_salaries_per_financial_statements https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie... This wasn't "necessary to maintain the sites"; US inflation averaged 2% during that period. Moreover, "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." Source: https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-ties-to-big-tech https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-t... Also see the comments from a Wikimedia executive quoted above about how the Wikimedia Foundation's "working group on Revenue Streams" picked as its first guiding question how to "maximize revenue for the movement". A vernacular translation of how to "maximize revenue for the movement" would be "How to get as much money from Wikipedia readers as possible."

ryan_lane 4y ago
The number of employees has nearly doubled in five years, which is why the cost of salaries has increased. WMF is consistently understaffed, so hiring is necessary for maintaining the sites. Note that when I say maintain, that I consider improvements to be part of maintenance, because part of maintaining the sites is keeping them modern, and supporting the community with necessary features. The salaries have also increased over that period of time, but US inflation averaged 2% per year, not in total. Also, WMF has historically drastically underpaid employees, and their current salaries are definitely closer to (but still considerably lower than) industry standards. The quote you're using is the cost of the sites, not including the salaries, which is exactly the misinformation I'm trying to correct. It's absolutely inaccurate in the way you're using it. The revenue streams they're talking about is the enterprise API thing, which is basically just charging major users of the API for their cost. Your interpretation of this is needlessly misleading.
- akolbe 4y ago
  I'll repeat that quote from the WMF executive above: "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/2017#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity 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 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.