Wikimedia Foundation Form 990, Jimmy Wales Speaking Fee $75,000+Infothought blog, by
Seth FinkelsteinMay 14, 2009
QUOTE
Somehow, that doesn't feel like "charity work" to me. I actually wouldn't mind so much if he said something like "No, I don't take any money out of the Wikimedia Foundation, since it's a nonprofit, which could pay chump-change anyway. Instead, I fleece executives who have far more money than sense, and are crazy enough to pay me tens of thousands of dollars to spout buzzwords and blather. What do you think, that I'm some sort of silly *altruist*?" (of course, more elegantly phrased). There would still be a problem of it being built on exploitation. But it's the "charity work" part which strikes me as wrong. Nothing which results in one gig paying more than the entire salary of the person in charge of keeping the site running, can fairly be described as "charity work".
I had hoped for a bit more dirt. Seth finds that the salaries are not too extravagant. This may be true, but remember, this Form 990 accounts for July 2007 through June 2008 -- well before SpiderHand Sue's budget of $472,000 for the Gardner/Moeller compensation fund even kicked in. Next year's Form 990 will tell the real story.
Look, it would seem that "Program Service Accomplishments" are what a dutiful reporter should be looking at. At the WMF, they account for only
31.6% of the total revenues of the organization.
Let's compare:
REAL CHARITIES:- American Red Cross spent 103.7% of revenues on program services.
- Breast Cancer Research Foundation spent 83.4% of revenues on program services.
- Doctors Without Borders spent 82.8% of revenues on program services.
- United Way of America spent 80.5% of revenues on program services.
FAKE CHARITIES:- Electronic Frontier Foundation spent 44.2% of revenues on program services.
- Wikimedia Foundation spent 31.6% of revenues on program services.
- Deputy Sheriffs' Fraternal Organization (the folks who pay tele-centers to call you at dinner time for donations by phone, and who should not be confused with the American Deputy Sheriffs Association, which was forced to fold after breaking the law and spending 0.2% on services benefiting deputies) spent 15.6% of revenues on program services.
- Wishing Well Foundation spent 13.2% of revenues on program services, even after rebuke by the New York Times.
Now, really. Based on this important statistic alone, with which category of "charity" is the Wikimedia Foundation associating itself -- the good guys or the bad guys?
Also, "Savings and temporary cash investments" at the WMF increased nearly $2 million from the middle of 2007 to the middle of 2008. That's a lot of squirreling away nuts for the winter, for a $6.5 million organization.
And, by the way, if you're ever wondering just how much the server equipment and the Internet hosting costs for this massively popular website -- about $1.6 million. Good thing they have $6.5 million in income to guarantee coverage of that.
P.S. Somebody has to tell Seth about making snappier titles for his blog articles.
Greg
This post has been edited by thekohser:
Wikimedia Foundation Form 990, Seth Finkelstein sleuths Jimbo's income
thekohser Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 
