18 ms·

Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to non-Wikimedia projects

128 points by Tamarini 3y ago

drones 3y ago
Why does Wikimedia give so much away when Wikipedia itself is completely reliant on donations? Saw some "if everyone gave $2" banners earlier today.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Wikipedia is sufficiently funded for quite some time into the future. They have a lot of money.
- theamk 3y ago
  The banners lies (or to be precise, misleads): they say they "depend on donations" but they don't say what they are trying to do.. they don't need donation to keep wikipedia.org alive, they need donations so they can do outreach and grants and travel and community programs.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > they don't need donation to keep wikipedia.org alive, they need donations so they can do outreach and grants and travel and community programs. Keeping Wikipedia alive isn't difficult on the tech side. Like, the software needs a bit of maintenance and the occasional rebrush, but that's it. The problem is the community. Wikipedia's survival depends on editors and administrators, both of which are in short supply - which has been an issue for way too long. I remember it from back when I was still at school, so way over a decade ago, that there was a huge issue with the Croatian Wikipedia basically having been taken over by far-right nationalist ideology on everything related to history, and other Balkan Wikipedias suffering from the same fate of nationalism, not made easier by people argumenting that there shouldn't be a distinct Wikipedia as it is a widespread belief that Croatian and Serbian are the same language - but no Croat will ever learn to read and write Cyrillic unless he has to (vice versa is a bit better because most Serbs will learn English and with it the Latin alphabet). Therefore, Wikimedia has no alternative but to (massively) invest in outreach, because the less active editors there are the higher the chance of entire communities being lost to ethnic squabbles or plain fraud (IIRC there used to be a case of someone making up entire articles in a faked Germanic? dialect).
    - laurensr 3y ago
      You are referring to the Scots Wikipedia [1]. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-language-american-teenager.html https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-languag...
    - vasac 3y ago
      Minor nitpick: all Serbs will learn the Latin alphabet not because they’ll eventually learn English, but because the Latin alphabet is being taught in elementary schools alongside Cyrillic.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        As an alternative orthography for Serbian or as a foreign language?
        grujicd 3y ago
        Latin and Cyryllic alphabets are completely equal in theory and practice. All Serbs know both. You can find books, newspapers, logos, restaurant menus in both alphabets. Some prefer cyrillic as more traditional and "more Serbian", some prefer latin as a more practical when using computers.
    - newaccount74 3y ago
      Thank you for being the first person in this thread who understands that there is more to running a site than keeping apache running.
- jtwoodhouse 3y ago
  Agendas don't promote themselves.
wmf 3y ago
Wikipedia is totally overfunded [edit: this was true in previous years but maybe now the bloat is finally winning] and couldn't spend all their money if they wanted to. I guess giving some away is more interesting than letting the money accumulate.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  They could also slow down fundraising.
  - wmf 3y ago
    I think they're worried about losing non-profit status.
    - fakedang 3y ago
      Unless I'm missing something, trusts can still keep nonprofit status without fundraising.
    - CameronNemo 3y ago
      How would that happen? I'm not familiar with the peculiarities of nonprofit law.
      - wmf 3y ago
        They need to get 1/3 of their revenue (over $50M) as donations from the general public to qualify as a charity. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizations-annual-reporting-requirements-form-990-schedules-a-and-b-public-charity-support-test https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizatio...
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- IshKebab 3y ago
  They definitely could spend all their money. If it becomes national news that your Wikipedia donations aren't really spent on Wikipedia then people might stop donating. They spend $145m/year and raise about $155m/year, so they're basically spending everything they get.
hirundo 3y ago
For me the proposition of donating to the actual Wikipedia project is attractive, and the idea of donating to whoever Wikimedia cares to donate to, excepting Wikipedia, is unattractive, regardless of beneficiary. I used to donate occasionally but the fundraising banner lost all power over me when I learned about this policy. I wish them well but will be sending my limited donation dollars to projects that aren't already flush with funds.
klntsky 3y ago
Wikipedia as an encyclopedia project is a complete failure. It fails to deliver a consistent representatiuon of reality. The basic premise that if there is an open discussion, inconsistencies can eventually be resolved, is false. Not to mention it's openness gives all sorts of attackers an easy target.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- IKantRead 3y ago
  > It fails to deliver a consistent representatiuon of reality. I'm curious by what precisely you mean by this. Last I checked, reality itself has problems consistently representing itself.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - klntsky 3y ago
    I mean articles not contradicting each other. > reality itself has problems consistently representing itself In this case neutral statements could be used.
    - notpushkin 3y ago
      I don't think eliminating contradictions matters that much. Wikipedia is a good starting point for reading up on topics that matter to you and then doing your own research, and a nice website to kill a few hours reading about topics that don't. Even with contradictions it works fine for both use cases. It isn't a good encyclopedia, I agree – but what is?
- mattigames 3y ago
  The "historical Jesus" one is the funniest entry to me, it conveniently ommits who his "historical father" is, and pretends multiple sources are talking about the same person even if they don't agree in the most basic details, imagine that with any other Wikipedia bigraphic entry: "The Hitler I'm talking about commited no genocide and didn't believe in eugenics, but let's all pretend we are still talking about the same person, for the sake of peace among the discussers".
imafish 3y ago
Huh. Guess I will stop donating to Wikimedia. Not that I don’t support those causes. I just thought my money went to maintaining Wikipedia.
- dewey 3y ago
  It's not like they decided to use 100% of donations for other projects, it still supports the Wikipedia.
  - kikokikokiko 3y ago
    It doesn't matter. It's highly reproachable that they decided to use the money that people donated to help keep Wikipedia's lights on, on a political endeavour. It sends a clear signal to me to never, ever, give money to them again. It is infuriating to see your resources being employed on political causes that you fiercely oppose.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - kikokikokiko 3y ago
        I live in a third world country, so the level of my donations may not compare to the average HN user, but I used to pledge around 5 dollars per year. In the last couple of years to tell you the truth I hadn't donated since I started getting sick of those stupid banners, and now I think it's good that I did not participated in their shennanigans.
        micromacrofoot 3y ago
        Oh no worries, I was just wondering how much I could increase my donation to counter everyone claiming that they'll stop donating in this thread.
mrguyorama 3y ago
People get so upset that charities do things with money that they don't agree with, but that's like the entire point of charity? That the money is no longer yours? The only people who DO put such limits on their charity are extremely rich people pretending to "donate" for PR reasons while still controlling the money through their own charity or whatever. If you don't like what a charity does, don't donate to it?
- zo1 3y ago
  And people will stop donating, I stopped. The point of charity is to help the charity you want to help. Having it turn around and misuse your money by spending it on a completely unrelated cause defies the point and is downright fraud. I donate because I want to advance human knowledge and access for all. I don't want my money spent on downright anti-white propaganda that discriminates against innocent white people.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    > I don't want my money spent on downright anti-white propaganda that discriminates against innocent white people. Why do you claim this to be anti-white propaganda?
    - laserdancepony 3y ago
      Because it's been the way the world works for some years now. No need to double-check anymore.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  > If you don't like what a charity does, don't donate to it? I mean, that's the point of this, right? If you donate to a charity thinking it's going to do A but it does B then you may want to stop donating to it. The only way you can do that is if you know they're doing B and not A. So what's happening here is some people are doing exactly what you're saying but you're saying they should do that? They're already doing that.
- 3y ago
gettodachoppa 3y ago
Big Nonprofit strikes again. The money you donate is not going to support Wikipedia as you know it. The people writing the wikipedia articles you read will not see a cent of the money you donate, as Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced community effort by volunteers. The server costs, the techie employees hired to manage the servers, develop the wiki software, mobile applications, etc, are less than 3% of their current expenses. Your donations are going to Big Nonprofit, a type of industry that attaches itself to any community it can get its hands on, and then focuses on 2 goals only: 1) survive at all costs, and 2) grow forever. There will never be a day where Big Nonprofit will say "we have enough money". Or "mission accomplished, we can close this department". Never. Big Nonprofit attaches itself to a host (core mission, core product, community, whatever you want to call it), and slowly takes it over, while still presenting as the original host. It uses deception, and intentional blurring of the line between host and parasite, to use people's support of the host to the benefit of the parasite. More and more responsibilities are put under the rug of the initial mission goals, and these responsibilities grow to infinity. And one day, if/when money gets tight, what do you think happens? Will Big Nonprofit trim its fat a little bit? Laughable! No, the host is sacrificed so the parasite can live. This is how companies like Mozilla end up sacking actual engineers like the Rust team, while still keeping hundreds of non-techie trustfund kids doing "activism" from lavish Bay Area offices. You cannot get around this. Maybe you wisened up, saw the blurred lines, and figured "I'll just donate directly to the project I support". You cannot donate directly to Wikipedia the website, or to Firefox the web browser, or to Rust (when it was a Mozilla project). Big Nonprofit made sure to cut off those avenues for you. Your money can only be spent the way Big Nonprofit wants, i.e. on itself. Here's (https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-foundation-announces-first-grant-recipients-of-new-4-5-million-equity-fund/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-fo...) where your donations end up going. Regardless of whether you support these groups or not (I think they're race grifters), they have nothing to do with Wikipedia, encyclopedias, or even off-topic-but-still-sorta-relevant goals like wanting more poor people to use Wikipedia. You'll notice one thing they all have in common: they have no truly measurable metrics for success. Because Big Nonprofit can't grow if the question "what benefits are we getting by spending donation money this way?" can be answered. Bezos and Musk could gift them their entire fortunes overnight, and the only change at the end of the year will be more Big Nonprofit employees hired, and more fund-raisers campaigns. You can see some people who raised the issue of where all this money is going here (https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/IAEIVZX3P4M2UC35L3DDXGSKCYH5WLJB/?sort=date https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...), including mysterious multi-million donations to outside nonprofits, a huge ballooning in operating expenses, etc. The people raising these issues are rebuked by Wikimedia employees whose signatures and blogs show they spend a lot of time at various conferences around the world and virtue signaling for diversity. I wouldn't want my gravy train of free trips to Bangkok to end either.
emilsedgh 3y ago
Of all the things people can be angry about Wikipedia's small contributions to other non-profits is the one they choose do protest. Amazing. Wikipedia has been one of the most beautiful creations of the Internet and they continue to be trustworthy. I don't really see anything worthy of bad faith assumptions about Wikipedia's $70K donation Filipino American National Historical Society. Seriously people find better causes. Protest real issues.
- LightHugger 3y ago
  Wikipedia is very untrustworthy on controversial topics. They often ignore the controversy and just state one side's opinions as facts, i am not talking about vaccination or global warming something that is obviously fact based, i'm talking about social controversies things that cite entirely opinion pieces.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    Wikipedia the company does this? or are you complaining about the contributors?
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  My donations to the Wikipedia foundation should solely be used to support the Wikipedia platform. I make donations to many different charities, but I do my own due diligence, in particular how much money actually goes to the cause in question, rather gets used to pay an expensive C-suite.
  - akolbe 3y ago
    Not too long ago, the Wikimedia Foundation spent nearly $1 million on two executives' severance pay. One had only worked there for 2.5 years: Signpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 And for a laugh, see the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ashutosh-upreti-wedding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ash... "The couple traveled around the world in early 2022 and moved to New York that June. ... On July 22, Erica Kochi, a friend of the couple who became a one-day deputy marriage commissioner in San Francisco, officiated the wedding before 140 guests on the lawn of Willow Camp in Stinson Beach, Calif. The day before, the groom rode in on a white horse for a Hindu ceremony. “It was two days of cross-cultural celebration and community,” Ms. Maher said, “and a really big dance party.”" I guess the donations helped pay for that as well.
wackget 3y ago
FTA: > As of December 31, 2021, the Endowment held $105.4 million. There is currently $99.33 million in the investment account and $6.07 million in cash. An additional $8 million raised in December will be transferred to the Endowment in January 2022. Damn. Regardless of their questionable politically-motivated donations, I feel like they're being disingenuous when they plaster the "PLEASE DON'T IGNORE THIS" donation banners all over Wikipedia. Seems like they have tons and tons of cash.
- MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
  I'm wondering if I'll ever see the day when somebody who asks me for money actually needs it.
  - sseagull 3y ago
    It’s like universities with billions already in their endowment fund. Whatever it is, it isn’t enough, and the fund better be bigger next year. It’s the equivalent of individual people who never feel financially secure, even with millions in the bank.
  - m463 3y ago
    Isn't that just life though? The people who ask for things are the ones who get them. Squeaky wheel gets the oil.
    - MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
      A squeaky wheel at least needs lubrication. I'm not the judge of who "actually needs" money, but surely there are tons of people in the world (maybe in my neighborhood) who are struggling and would be helped by having some of my money. None of those people are asking me for change on the street or sending me donation letters. Disjoint sets.
- LewisVerstappen 3y ago
  Frankly, wikipedia’s gotten significantly worse as a source of knowledge over the last few years as well. Tons and tons of astroturfing & bias with articles. There’s obviously tons of politicial bias but there’s also lots of individuals writing their own bias as a “uninterested third party” when in reality they’re emphasizing the narrative most favorable to them. You see it a ton with wikipedia pages of entrepreneurs, journalists & obviously politicians.
tb_technical 3y ago
If they keep this up, they're going to find their funding dry up.
BowBun 3y ago
As a casual bystander, I don't understand why there isn't 100% transparency of a non-profit entirely funded by donations. I'm icked out by the repeat stories I keep reading about them, and if they're not willing to come out and just share the numbers, then I don't think I can continue trusting them as an organization.
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  There is transparency—ignorant people lie and make claims to cause controversy. A lot of this comes down to people thinking Wikipedia shouldn't continue to follow their original vision[1] and instead just limit themselves to just hosting a wiki site and that's it. Again, a lot of ignorance and lies. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective
- buildingsramen 3y ago
  Right here, a free, public, and professionally-designed report: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annu... Regular announcements of specific grants: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/04/13/first-grants-announced-from-the-wikimedia-endowment/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/04/13/first-grants...
  - akolbe 3y ago
    As the 2nd story on the linked page discusses, the $120M Endowment has never published one of those. It's completely non-transparent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-08-15/News_and_notes#Jimbo_promises_improvements_for_Wikimedia_Endowment's_lackluster_transparency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=1170966979#Endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_W...
jasonlotito 3y ago
It's odd how people pretend to "support" Wikipedia but seem opposed to it's goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective So, when people talk about Wikipedia being completely funded and not needing more money, they are lying. Flat out lying. Rather, they are saying "Wikipedia has enough money to serve me, everyone else doesn't matter." Wikipedia's goals (which have been well-published and posted for a long, long time now) aren't just about a website. It's about giving everyone free access the sum of all human knowledge. In 2008, Jimmy Wales said this: "'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." It's not just to "Host a wiki, which for the majority of people here, they think that's the purpose." When they fundraise, it's for the entire mission. And until everyone has access to the sum of all human knowledge, they are still running short. As for these groups, they all fit with that goal, of getting people access to this information, of providing information, of achieving that goal. Feel free to disagree with their goal, but stop lying and pretending it has enough money. It doesn't, since it hasn't achieved its mission yet. The only thing you are saying when you say they are lying is that you got yours, everyone else can suffer.
- laserdancepony 3y ago
  $100,000 USD to Data for Black Lives, United States Data for Black Lives is a movement of activists, organizers, and scientists committed to the mission of using data to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people. They will use the grant in part to launch a Movement Scientists Fellowship matching racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications to drive change in the areas of climate, genetics, and economic justice. Yeah right, that does not sound janky at all. "It's all about knowledge." I think you have internalized too much of their PR recently.
seabass-labrax 3y ago
I feel that the article implies that the situation is unusual and alarming, but the reality is that this a normal, if suboptimal, set of circumstances in third-sector (non-profit) organisations. > "One concern was the lack of community input into the process that led to the fund's creation". For the steward of a project like Wikipedia, it's true that a consensus-based governance structure would be appropriate. However, these are notoriously difficult to maintain in practice, frequently becoming split into partisan groups that obstruct decisions from being made. The Wikimedia Foundation currently has a self-selecting board of limited size, and so it is their responsibility to make decisions on their own in what they feel is in the best interests of the stakeholders. This does not preclude them from asking what the community of Wikipedia users want, but these are not the Foundation's only valid stakeholders. > "Another was the use of money which was generally solicited on the grounds of being necessary to fund Wikimedia projects, meaning that many donors likely did not know or intend for their funds to be given to unrelated organizations." This is indeed frustrating, but it is absolutely not uncommon for such organisations to use rhetoric in their fundraising. If the Wikimedia Foundation employ typical marketing individuals, they are most likely to run typical marketing campaigns for their fundraising. I am not defending the misleading advertisements, but I would point out that there is nothing shockingly unusual about this specific case. > "Two of the grant recipients from the first round seem to have not shared financial reports detailing how the money was spent." The Wikimedia Foundation will have done what they thought was due diligence; it feels too early to me (it is less than a year after the grant was announced) to claim that A. the beneficiaries are fraudulent, and B. that the Wikimedia Foundation could have reasonably determined this. I will admit that my alarm bells are ringing at the haphazard nature of the website of one of the two beneficiaries lacking a financial statement at the moment (https://iipsj.org https://iipsj.org). > "This is a strange comment, as it would seem entirely within the power of the board to determine what information the minutes of its own meetings should contain." This aspect is unsurprising to me, as it is generally not the board's responsibility to produce the minutes of their meetings. This is technically the responsibility of the Executive Director. The ED (sometimes called the CEO, or as an anachronism the General Secretary), is typically the most senior remunerated executive and does not sit on the board, but usually attends the board meetings in order to represent the staff. The actual writing of the minutes is usually delegated by the ED to the Secretary, who may be a board member or staff member depending on the organisation. The Board certainly have the power to refuse approval of the minutes, but it sounds from Jimbo Wale's quote that no one believed that the minutes were actually incorrect in this case, and therefore didn't want to upset the apple cart by withholding their approval. --- In conclusion, I would like to express the opinion that there are multiple valid concerns raised in this article, but from the perspective of someone generally involved in third-sector/non-profit organisations, the Wikimedia Foundation does not appear to be a train-wreck by any stretch of the imagination, and is in fact about average! The stakeholders of Wikimedia are entitled to desire more, and I personally hope the Wikimedia Foundation take every opportunity to improve. Similarly, donations are of course voluntary and maybe being more cautious with your cash is the right way to communicate discontent to the Board. However, I don't think the Wikimedia Foundation are being irresponsible in their management of their grant fund, and unless you object to their running of one at all, I would suggest that ceasing donations is an extreme response.
ethbr1 3y ago
Either be a service or be a charity. But don't take donations for a service and then use them for a charity: that's lying to donors.
notpushkin 3y ago
Some worthy causes you can donate to instead: - https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/ - https://supporters.eff.org/donate/ https://supporters.eff.org/donate/ - or some open source project you use maybe
T3RMINATED 3y ago
[dead]
andrewstuart 3y ago
Oh my the anti Wikipedia funding vendetta is back on the front page of HN.
- _2z1p 3y ago
  I think it's fair to be upset when Wikimedia begs for donations to fund Wikipedia and then takes those donations and doesn't fund the continued operations of Wikipedia and instead gives these donations to completely different charitable organizations. All the while continuing to ask visitors for donations constantly, despite clearly having more money than they actually need.
dalmo3 3y ago
Alternatively, if you donate to uBlock Wikipedia stops asking you for money...
ldehaan 3y ago
[dead]

128 points by Tamarini 3y ago

Why does Wikimedia give so much away when Wikipedia itself is completely reliant on donations? Saw some "if everyone gave $2" banners earlier today.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Wikipedia is sufficiently funded for quite some time into the future. They have a lot of money.
theamk 3y ago
The banners lies (or to be precise, misleads): they say they "depend on donations" but they don't say what they are trying to do.. they don't need donation to keep wikipedia.org alive, they need donations so they can do outreach and grants and travel and community programs.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > they don't need donation to keep wikipedia.org alive, they need donations so they can do outreach and grants and travel and community programs. Keeping Wikipedia alive isn't difficult on the tech side. Like, the software needs a bit of maintenance and the occasional rebrush, but that's it. The problem is the community. Wikipedia's survival depends on editors and administrators, both of which are in short supply - which has been an issue for way too long. I remember it from back when I was still at school, so way over a decade ago, that there was a huge issue with the Croatian Wikipedia basically having been taken over by far-right nationalist ideology on everything related to history, and other Balkan Wikipedias suffering from the same fate of nationalism, not made easier by people argumenting that there shouldn't be a distinct Wikipedia as it is a widespread belief that Croatian and Serbian are the same language - but no Croat will ever learn to read and write Cyrillic unless he has to (vice versa is a bit better because most Serbs will learn English and with it the Latin alphabet). Therefore, Wikimedia has no alternative but to (massively) invest in outreach, because the less active editors there are the higher the chance of entire communities being lost to ethnic squabbles or plain fraud (IIRC there used to be a case of someone making up entire articles in a faked Germanic? dialect).
  - laurensr 3y ago
    You are referring to the Scots Wikipedia [1]. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-language-american-teenager.html https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-languag...
  - vasac 3y ago
    Minor nitpick: all Serbs will learn the Latin alphabet not because they’ll eventually learn English, but because the Latin alphabet is being taught in elementary schools alongside Cyrillic.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      As an alternative orthography for Serbian or as a foreign language?
      - grujicd 3y ago
        Latin and Cyryllic alphabets are completely equal in theory and practice. All Serbs know both. You can find books, newspapers, logos, restaurant menus in both alphabets. Some prefer cyrillic as more traditional and "more Serbian", some prefer latin as a more practical when using computers.
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    Thank you for being the first person in this thread who understands that there is more to running a site than keeping apache running.
jtwoodhouse 3y ago
Agendas don't promote themselves.

wmf 3y ago

Wikipedia is totally overfunded [edit: this was true in previous years but maybe now the bloat is finally winning] and couldn't spend all their money if they wanted to. I guess giving some away is more interesting than letting the money accumulate.

amadeuspagel 3y ago
They could also slow down fundraising.
- wmf 3y ago
  I think they're worried about losing non-profit status.
  - fakedang 3y ago
    Unless I'm missing something, trusts can still keep nonprofit status without fundraising.
  - CameronNemo 3y ago
    How would that happen? I'm not familiar with the peculiarities of nonprofit law.
    - wmf 3y ago
      They need to get 1/3 of their revenue (over $50M) as donations from the general public to qualify as a charity. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizations-annual-reporting-requirements-form-990-schedules-a-and-b-public-charity-support-test https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizatio...
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
IshKebab 3y ago
They definitely could spend all their money. If it becomes national news that your Wikipedia donations aren't really spent on Wikipedia then people might stop donating. They spend $145m/year and raise about $155m/year, so they're basically spending everything they get.

hirundo 3y ago

For me the proposition of donating to the actual Wikipedia project is attractive, and the idea of donating to whoever Wikimedia cares to donate to, excepting Wikipedia, is unattractive, regardless of beneficiary. I used to donate occasionally but the fundraising banner lost all power over me when I learned about this policy. I wish them well but will be sending my limited donation dollars to projects that aren't already flush with funds.

klntsky 3y ago

Wikipedia as an encyclopedia project is a complete failure. It fails to deliver a consistent representatiuon of reality. The basic premise that if there is an open discussion, inconsistencies can eventually be resolved, is false. Not to mention it's openness gives all sorts of attackers an easy target.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
IKantRead 3y ago
> It fails to deliver a consistent representatiuon of reality. I'm curious by what precisely you mean by this. Last I checked, reality itself has problems consistently representing itself.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  [flagged]
- klntsky 3y ago
  I mean articles not contradicting each other. > reality itself has problems consistently representing itself In this case neutral statements could be used.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    I don't think eliminating contradictions matters that much. Wikipedia is a good starting point for reading up on topics that matter to you and then doing your own research, and a nice website to kill a few hours reading about topics that don't. Even with contradictions it works fine for both use cases. It isn't a good encyclopedia, I agree – but what is?
mattigames 3y ago
The "historical Jesus" one is the funniest entry to me, it conveniently ommits who his "historical father" is, and pretends multiple sources are talking about the same person even if they don't agree in the most basic details, imagine that with any other Wikipedia bigraphic entry: "The Hitler I'm talking about commited no genocide and didn't believe in eugenics, but let's all pretend we are still talking about the same person, for the sake of peace among the discussers".

imafish 3y ago

Huh. Guess I will stop donating to Wikimedia. Not that I don’t support those causes. I just thought my money went to maintaining Wikipedia.

dewey 3y ago
It's not like they decided to use 100% of donations for other projects, it still supports the Wikipedia.
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  It doesn't matter. It's highly reproachable that they decided to use the money that people donated to help keep Wikipedia's lights on, on a political endeavour. It sends a clear signal to me to never, ever, give money to them again. It is infuriating to see your resources being employed on political causes that you fiercely oppose.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - kikokikokiko 3y ago
      I live in a third world country, so the level of my donations may not compare to the average HN user, but I used to pledge around 5 dollars per year. In the last couple of years to tell you the truth I hadn't donated since I started getting sick of those stupid banners, and now I think it's good that I did not participated in their shennanigans.
      - micromacrofoot 3y ago
        Oh no worries, I was just wondering how much I could increase my donation to counter everyone claiming that they'll stop donating in this thread.

mrguyorama 3y ago

People get so upset that charities do things with money that they don't agree with, but that's like the entire point of charity? That the money is no longer yours? The only people who DO put such limits on their charity are extremely rich people pretending to "donate" for PR reasons while still controlling the money through their own charity or whatever. If you don't like what a charity does, don't donate to it?

zo1 3y ago
And people will stop donating, I stopped. The point of charity is to help the charity you want to help. Having it turn around and misuse your money by spending it on a completely unrelated cause defies the point and is downright fraud. I donate because I want to advance human knowledge and access for all. I don't want my money spent on downright anti-white propaganda that discriminates against innocent white people.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  > I don't want my money spent on downright anti-white propaganda that discriminates against innocent white people. Why do you claim this to be anti-white propaganda?
  - laserdancepony 3y ago
    Because it's been the way the world works for some years now. No need to double-check anymore.
renewiltord 3y ago
> If you don't like what a charity does, don't donate to it? I mean, that's the point of this, right? If you donate to a charity thinking it's going to do A but it does B then you may want to stop donating to it. The only way you can do that is if you know they're doing B and not A. So what's happening here is some people are doing exactly what you're saying but you're saying they should do that? They're already doing that.
3y ago

gettodachoppa 3y ago

Big Nonprofit strikes again. The money you donate is not going to support Wikipedia as you know it. The people writing the wikipedia articles you read will not see a cent of the money you donate, as Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced community effort by volunteers. The server costs, the techie employees hired to manage the servers, develop the wiki software, mobile applications, etc, are less than 3% of their current expenses. Your donations are going to Big Nonprofit, a type of industry that attaches itself to any community it can get its hands on, and then focuses on 2 goals only: 1) survive at all costs, and 2) grow forever. There will never be a day where Big Nonprofit will say "we have enough money". Or "mission accomplished, we can close this department". Never. Big Nonprofit attaches itself to a host (core mission, core product, community, whatever you want to call it), and slowly takes it over, while still presenting as the original host. It uses deception, and intentional blurring of the line between host and parasite, to use people's support of the host to the benefit of the parasite. More and more responsibilities are put under the rug of the initial mission goals, and these responsibilities grow to infinity. And one day, if/when money gets tight, what do you think happens? Will Big Nonprofit trim its fat a little bit? Laughable! No, the host is sacrificed so the parasite can live. This is how companies like Mozilla end up sacking actual engineers like the Rust team, while still keeping hundreds of non-techie trustfund kids doing "activism" from lavish Bay Area offices. You cannot get around this. Maybe you wisened up, saw the blurred lines, and figured "I'll just donate directly to the project I support". You cannot donate directly to Wikipedia the website, or to Firefox the web browser, or to Rust (when it was a Mozilla project). Big Nonprofit made sure to cut off those avenues for you. Your money can only be spent the way Big Nonprofit wants, i.e. on itself. Here's (https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-foundation-announces-first-grant-recipients-of-new-4-5-million-equity-fund/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-fo...) where your donations end up going. Regardless of whether you support these groups or not (I think they're race grifters), they have nothing to do with Wikipedia, encyclopedias, or even off-topic-but-still-sorta-relevant goals like wanting more poor people to use Wikipedia. You'll notice one thing they all have in common: they have no truly measurable metrics for success. Because Big Nonprofit can't grow if the question "what benefits are we getting by spending donation money this way?" can be answered. Bezos and Musk could gift them their entire fortunes overnight, and the only change at the end of the year will be more Big Nonprofit employees hired, and more fund-raisers campaigns. You can see some people who raised the issue of where all this money is going here (https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/IAEIVZX3P4M2UC35L3DDXGSKCYH5WLJB/?sort=date https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...), including mysterious multi-million donations to outside nonprofits, a huge ballooning in operating expenses, etc. The people raising these issues are rebuked by Wikimedia employees whose signatures and blogs show they spend a lot of time at various conferences around the world and virtue signaling for diversity. I wouldn't want my gravy train of free trips to Bangkok to end either.

emilsedgh 3y ago

Of all the things people can be angry about Wikipedia's small contributions to other non-profits is the one they choose do protest. Amazing. Wikipedia has been one of the most beautiful creations of the Internet and they continue to be trustworthy. I don't really see anything worthy of bad faith assumptions about Wikipedia's $70K donation Filipino American National Historical Society. Seriously people find better causes. Protest real issues.

LightHugger 3y ago
Wikipedia is very untrustworthy on controversial topics. They often ignore the controversy and just state one side's opinions as facts, i am not talking about vaccination or global warming something that is obviously fact based, i'm talking about social controversies things that cite entirely opinion pieces.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  Wikipedia the company does this? or are you complaining about the contributors?
oxfordmale 3y ago
My donations to the Wikipedia foundation should solely be used to support the Wikipedia platform. I make donations to many different charities, but I do my own due diligence, in particular how much money actually goes to the cause in question, rather gets used to pay an expensive C-suite.
- akolbe 3y ago
  Not too long ago, the Wikimedia Foundation spent nearly $1 million on two executives' severance pay. One had only worked there for 2.5 years: Signpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 And for a laugh, see the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ashutosh-upreti-wedding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ash... "The couple traveled around the world in early 2022 and moved to New York that June. ... On July 22, Erica Kochi, a friend of the couple who became a one-day deputy marriage commissioner in San Francisco, officiated the wedding before 140 guests on the lawn of Willow Camp in Stinson Beach, Calif. The day before, the groom rode in on a white horse for a Hindu ceremony. “It was two days of cross-cultural celebration and community,” Ms. Maher said, “and a really big dance party.”" I guess the donations helped pay for that as well.

wackget 3y ago

FTA: > As of December 31, 2021, the Endowment held $105.4 million. There is currently $99.33 million in the investment account and $6.07 million in cash. An additional $8 million raised in December will be transferred to the Endowment in January 2022. Damn. Regardless of their questionable politically-motivated donations, I feel like they're being disingenuous when they plaster the "PLEASE DON'T IGNORE THIS" donation banners all over Wikipedia. Seems like they have tons and tons of cash.

MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
I'm wondering if I'll ever see the day when somebody who asks me for money actually needs it.
- sseagull 3y ago
  It’s like universities with billions already in their endowment fund. Whatever it is, it isn’t enough, and the fund better be bigger next year. It’s the equivalent of individual people who never feel financially secure, even with millions in the bank.
- m463 3y ago
  Isn't that just life though? The people who ask for things are the ones who get them. Squeaky wheel gets the oil.
  - MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
    A squeaky wheel at least needs lubrication. I'm not the judge of who "actually needs" money, but surely there are tons of people in the world (maybe in my neighborhood) who are struggling and would be helped by having some of my money. None of those people are asking me for change on the street or sending me donation letters. Disjoint sets.
LewisVerstappen 3y ago
Frankly, wikipedia’s gotten significantly worse as a source of knowledge over the last few years as well. Tons and tons of astroturfing & bias with articles. There’s obviously tons of politicial bias but there’s also lots of individuals writing their own bias as a “uninterested third party” when in reality they’re emphasizing the narrative most favorable to them. You see it a ton with wikipedia pages of entrepreneurs, journalists & obviously politicians.

tb_technical 3y ago

If they keep this up, they're going to find their funding dry up.

BowBun 3y ago

As a casual bystander, I don't understand why there isn't 100% transparency of a non-profit entirely funded by donations. I'm icked out by the repeat stories I keep reading about them, and if they're not willing to come out and just share the numbers, then I don't think I can continue trusting them as an organization.

jasonlotito 3y ago
There is transparency—ignorant people lie and make claims to cause controversy. A lot of this comes down to people thinking Wikipedia shouldn't continue to follow their original vision[1] and instead just limit themselves to just hosting a wiki site and that's it. Again, a lot of ignorance and lies. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective
buildingsramen 3y ago
Right here, a free, public, and professionally-designed report: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annu... Regular announcements of specific grants: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/04/13/first-grants-announced-from-the-wikimedia-endowment/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/04/13/first-grants...
- akolbe 3y ago
  As the 2nd story on the linked page discusses, the $120M Endowment has never published one of those. It's completely non-transparent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-08-15/News_and_notes#Jimbo_promises_improvements_for_Wikimedia_Endowment's_lackluster_transparency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=1170966979#Endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_W...

jasonlotito 3y ago

It's odd how people pretend to "support" Wikipedia but seem opposed to it's goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective So, when people talk about Wikipedia being completely funded and not needing more money, they are lying. Flat out lying. Rather, they are saying "Wikipedia has enough money to serve me, everyone else doesn't matter." Wikipedia's goals (which have been well-published and posted for a long, long time now) aren't just about a website. It's about giving everyone free access the sum of all human knowledge. In 2008, Jimmy Wales said this: "'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." It's not just to "Host a wiki, which for the majority of people here, they think that's the purpose." When they fundraise, it's for the entire mission. And until everyone has access to the sum of all human knowledge, they are still running short. As for these groups, they all fit with that goal, of getting people access to this information, of providing information, of achieving that goal. Feel free to disagree with their goal, but stop lying and pretending it has enough money. It doesn't, since it hasn't achieved its mission yet. The only thing you are saying when you say they are lying is that you got yours, everyone else can suffer.

laserdancepony 3y ago
$100,000 USD to Data for Black Lives, United States Data for Black Lives is a movement of activists, organizers, and scientists committed to the mission of using data to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people. They will use the grant in part to launch a Movement Scientists Fellowship matching racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications to drive change in the areas of climate, genetics, and economic justice. Yeah right, that does not sound janky at all. "It's all about knowledge." I think you have internalized too much of their PR recently.

seabass-labrax 3y ago

I feel that the article implies that the situation is unusual and alarming, but the reality is that this a normal, if suboptimal, set of circumstances in third-sector (non-profit) organisations. > "One concern was the lack of community input into the process that led to the fund's creation". For the steward of a project like Wikipedia, it's true that a consensus-based governance structure would be appropriate. However, these are notoriously difficult to maintain in practice, frequently becoming split into partisan groups that obstruct decisions from being made. The Wikimedia Foundation currently has a self-selecting board of limited size, and so it is their responsibility to make decisions on their own in what they feel is in the best interests of the stakeholders. This does not preclude them from asking what the community of Wikipedia users want, but these are not the Foundation's only valid stakeholders. > "Another was the use of money which was generally solicited on the grounds of being necessary to fund Wikimedia projects, meaning that many donors likely did not know or intend for their funds to be given to unrelated organizations." This is indeed frustrating, but it is absolutely not uncommon for such organisations to use rhetoric in their fundraising. If the Wikimedia Foundation employ typical marketing individuals, they are most likely to run typical marketing campaigns for their fundraising. I am not defending the misleading advertisements, but I would point out that there is nothing shockingly unusual about this specific case. > "Two of the grant recipients from the first round seem to have not shared financial reports detailing how the money was spent." The Wikimedia Foundation will have done what they thought was due diligence; it feels too early to me (it is less than a year after the grant was announced) to claim that A. the beneficiaries are fraudulent, and B. that the Wikimedia Foundation could have reasonably determined this. I will admit that my alarm bells are ringing at the haphazard nature of the website of one of the two beneficiaries lacking a financial statement at the moment (https://iipsj.org https://iipsj.org). > "This is a strange comment, as it would seem entirely within the power of the board to determine what information the minutes of its own meetings should contain." This aspect is unsurprising to me, as it is generally not the board's responsibility to produce the minutes of their meetings. This is technically the responsibility of the Executive Director. The ED (sometimes called the CEO, or as an anachronism the General Secretary), is typically the most senior remunerated executive and does not sit on the board, but usually attends the board meetings in order to represent the staff. The actual writing of the minutes is usually delegated by the ED to the Secretary, who may be a board member or staff member depending on the organisation. The Board certainly have the power to refuse approval of the minutes, but it sounds from Jimbo Wale's quote that no one believed that the minutes were actually incorrect in this case, and therefore didn't want to upset the apple cart by withholding their approval. --- In conclusion, I would like to express the opinion that there are multiple valid concerns raised in this article, but from the perspective of someone generally involved in third-sector/non-profit organisations, the Wikimedia Foundation does not appear to be a train-wreck by any stretch of the imagination, and is in fact about average! The stakeholders of Wikimedia are entitled to desire more, and I personally hope the Wikimedia Foundation take every opportunity to improve. Similarly, donations are of course voluntary and maybe being more cautious with your cash is the right way to communicate discontent to the Board. However, I don't think the Wikimedia Foundation are being irresponsible in their management of their grant fund, and unless you object to their running of one at all, I would suggest that ceasing donations is an extreme response.

ethbr1 3y ago

Either be a service or be a charity. But don't take donations for a service and then use them for a charity: that's lying to donors.

notpushkin 3y ago

Some worthy causes you can donate to instead: - https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/ - https://supporters.eff.org/donate/ https://supporters.eff.org/donate/ - or some open source project you use maybe

T3RMINATED 3y ago

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andrewstuart 3y ago

Oh my the anti Wikipedia funding vendetta is back on the front page of HN.

_2z1p 3y ago
I think it's fair to be upset when Wikimedia begs for donations to fund Wikipedia and then takes those donations and doesn't fund the continued operations of Wikipedia and instead gives these donations to completely different charitable organizations. All the while continuing to ask visitors for donations constantly, despite clearly having more money than they actually need.

dalmo3 3y ago

Alternatively, if you donate to uBlock Wikipedia stops asking you for money...

ldehaan 3y ago

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