Wikipedia Gets $20M in Annual Fundraising

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Yay! Wikipedia raised $20M during its annual donation drive. No more banner ads with Jimmy Wales on them...for at least another 9 months. ;)

More than 1 million people throughout the world contributed the money during a 46-day fundraising drive, which concluded Sunday. The amount pledged to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that oversees the volunteer-driven Wikipedia, is a third more than the $15 million donated during the previous year's fundraising campaign.
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So, not including taxes, those 90 employees are bringing home a cool $155K a year each. Wow, that's not bad pay considering 99% of their content is contributed by the community...
 
OregonLAN said:
So, not including taxes, those 90 employees are bringing home a cool $155K a year each. Wow, that's not bad pay considering 99% of their content is contributed by the community...
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Thats a HUGE payroll percent for such a tiny fraction of employees for a company that is almost 100% content driven by non-employee contributors. If I recall correctly they even have volunteers who do at least some of the editing for them making you wonder just what it is they do there? My guess is stand around talking to each other while a few IT guys maintain the network, and I bet those guys are the lowest paid.
 
Don't these employees have to make sure that the website is perfectly fine and keep making sure garabage isn't being posted?

People always assume its free money, but they probably have no idea what kind of stuff these members have to do.
 
Considering how many viewers Wikipedia gets, they could be raking in far more money with ads. $20M is nothing.
 
$1m isn't even close to the operating costs for Wikipedia. You guys are spinning a false tangent.
 
It should be called panhandlepedia, or beggapedia, or fuck, just give us your money because.
 
^
....He's implying the potential Wikipedia can earn if ads are added is greater than the donation amount.
 
You guys are totally underestimating what it costs to run a company. Their avg salary is not near 155k. You need to add on 30-50% to the employees salary to figure out company's cost. Company needs to pay health/dental/life insurance, state/fed unemployment insurance, disability insurance, workers comp, medicare, social security. 110k avg or something is not that special in San Francisco-- pretty sure that is where they are based.
 
I think donating to wikipedia is a good thing, but I was getting ready to shoot my self if I had to see one more terrible picture of the unpleasant looking Jimmy Wales. (and other wikipedia staff)
 
Dev1ant said:
^
....He's implying the potential Wikipedia can earn if ads are added is greater than the donation amount.
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There are many reasons they don't run advertisements. I don't see what a lot of people have against them running wikipedia on donations and grants. You people talk they just ask for handouts and aren't providing a massive service to the whole world.
 
I'm kind of surprised Google hasn't bought the company yet, pretty sure their employees would make if off handsomely but after reading some of their "personal appeals", many of them previously had jobs where they created something that the public unknowingly paid too much for and they didn't feel so good about it. Props to Wikipedia for fighting against ads.
 
There are reasons why Wikipedia cannot have ads. I believe it's something to do with maintaining the site's credibility and neutral standpoint as sponsoring companies would not allow anything negative written about them (or something along those lines).

Wikipedia have to stay the way it is right now.
 
bexamous said:
You guys are totally underestimating what it costs to run a company. Their avg salary is not near 155k. You need to add on 30-50% to the employees salary to figure out company's cost. Company needs to pay health/dental/life insurance, state/fed unemployment insurance, disability insurance, workers comp, medicare, social security. 110k avg or something is not that special in San Francisco-- pretty sure that is where they are based.
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That is so true and it is amazing that so few people understand it. One big reason there is very little hiring these days is because it is cheaper to pay 50% extra in overtime for 10 hours/week to your entire staff than hire new employees!

Ironically, the cost of employer paid health insurance is one of the biggest marginal factor. If the US had a health care system with no employer role, the marginal cost of hiring a new employee versus paying overtime would not be that high.

hardware_failure said:
I think donating to wikipedia is a good thing, but I was getting ready to shoot my self if I had to see one more terrible picture of the unpleasant looking Jimmy Wales. (and other wikipedia staff)
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That was the whole point; they made it clear that donate if you do not want to see our mugs staring at you.
 
Valshistixol said:
There are many reasons they don't run advertisements. I don't see what a lot of people have against them running wikipedia on donations and grants. You people talk they just ask for handouts and aren't providing a massive service to the whole world.
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This. This so much.

Wikipedia is providing free knowledge to the entire world. Even if they were raking in millions per employee on donations and laughing all the way to the bank, I'd much rather give them my cash than a lot of the other companies who exist just to continue their existence and do little-to-nothing for the good of humanity.
 
Good for Wikipedia. I plan to donate to them this year when I get a chance.
 
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