Fundraising, Who donates to Wikimedia? Options

[thebainer]

I was looking for this data a while ago in relation to another thread, but couldn't find it since the server hosting it was down. However it's now hosted on another server, so it's accessible again.

http://fundraising.wikimedia.org

While these aren't official financial reports, they are a pretty accurate picture of the patterns of donations to the Foundation. There's a detailed breakdown of PayPal donations, with a timestamp, the amount, the name of the donor (if they chose to leave their name) and any comment the donor left.

[Lir]

While these aren't official financial reports, they are a pretty accurate picture of the patterns of donations to the Foundation.

Yes, but where is all the money going?

[Golbez]

Yes, but where is all the money going?

To run WikiCities servers in Angela Beesley's basement.

[Lir]

To run WikiCities servers in Angela Beesley's basement.

I rather doubt its in Angela's basement; but thanks for trolling.

[Lir]

Bomis: Wales own company. Do we see any mention of this company's massive donation of hosting and bandwidth in Wikimedia Foundations IRS900 or their state of Florida fundraising reports?

And I keep asking people about Bomis' role -- after all, as an internet hosting company, they are in a rather unique position to provide services to Wikimedia; now, Jimbo has said before that Bomis 'donated' services -- but I wonder, whether Bomis sometimes charges a fee; and, if so, whether that fee is reasonable.

Given Jimbo's exceedingly low ethics, it would not be surprising to find out that he is using volunteer money, to hire his own company at inflated cost... the absolute silence on this issue, makes me suspect there is something to such an allegation. I understand that defendants have a right to silence; nevertheless, I also believe that corporations have a duty to provide full disclosure of economic transactions.

A lot of volunteers, have donated an incredible amount of time and money to help Jimbo -- its time for him to tell people what he has done with their money. The rather vague reports, released so far, are hardly satisfactorily detailed; and, indeed, one would want some evidence to confirm the integrity of those statements -- Jimbo's word simply isn't good enough, especially on a wiki where anyone can edit the 'truth'.

[Lir]

wondering if Jimbo Wales is siphoning donations into Wikicities

Maybe Jimbo should provide a clear paper trail so that people can be certain that their donations are being spent properly.

Is that too much to ask?

[Lir]

Why does our discussion of this topic bother you?

My thoughts exactly.

How did you determine that the question is where Wikicities gets its money

Indeed, WikiCities is just an example of how Jimbo could be misallocating funds -- there are many ways he could do so, he could even buy a yellow Ferrari with the donations he has received; the point is, without any kind of a paper trail at all, there is room for plenty of abuse... the fact that Jimbo shows a lack of ethics, simply makes the potential for abuse greater.

the relationship of a for-profit and non-profit that use similar names for brand recognition

And their relationship with a certain for-profit internet porn company, known as Bomis -- a porn company which Jimbo repeatedly lied about, insisting that it was just a "search engine for guys".

co-mingling of assets including perhaps cash, equipment, information, personnel and brand recognition.

In three words: "conflict of interest"

[thebainer]

Let's look at who is really throwing down...
Bomis: Wales own company. Do we see any mention of this company's massive donation of hosting and bandwidth in Wikimedia Foundations IRS900 or their state of Florida fundraising reports?

Wikipedia was a Bomis project long before the Foundation existed. The Foundation "inherited" Wikipedia from Bomis, you might say. And it did so before the IRS granted the Foundation 501©(3) status, and AFAIK no such organisation has to report information about their existing assets in their subsequent paperwork. One presumes the IRS would have looked at the Foundation's financial position before granting it 501©(3) status.

It is the volunteer labor we might want to watch, and commercialization of assets developed through Wikimedia Foundation. He wanted to capitalize on the volunteer labor by releasing a for-profit CD, but more recently, projects like Wikia seem to be the focus of a for-profit/not-for-profit shell game.

Anyone can already take any of the content of any of the Wikimedia projects and commercialise it. I could put Wikipedia (or parts of it) on a DVD and sell it, and keep the profits for myself. Of course, someone else could come along next to me and sell Wikipedia on a DVD at cost, or give it away for free if they wanted.

IRS990 reports for 501c3 corporations don't require reporting of donated labor, but financial reports must account for volunteer labor to comply with GAAP.

All this would cover, however, is volunteer labour actually given to the Foundation, work done to carry out the actual business of the Foundation. People "working" on the Wikimedia projects wouldn't come under this because they're just using the website.

By the way, what's the difference between donated and volunteered labour in this context? I'm not familiar with the intricacies of US law on this subject, but a plain English reading doesn't seem to indicate any difference.

Why does our discussion of this topic bother you?
...
This is an excellent forum for exchanging ideas about where to direct investigation, including investigations of where servers are located and who provides servers, bandwidth or hosting. The relevant questions...

I think his point was that the relevant questions have already been posed, in some detail. They are certainly important questions, and people shouldn't forget that other thread about charity regulations elsewhere in the US and overseas, that's a discussion that's full of unanswered questions. That's the other part of his point, you see, the questions have been posed, which is great, but now someone actually needs to go looking for answers, or put the questions to someone who can provide answers.

[Daniel Brandt]

The thing to watch is any discussion about showing ads on Wikipedia. Jimmy would like to start showing AdSense on Wikipedia, but he pretends otherwise since most of the volunteers are opposed.

Last month Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus, co-founder of EFF, and chairman at Mozilla Foundation, said that Mozilla is raking in $50 million a year from Google. Kapor was speaking at an Open Source Business Conference where he placed Mozilla in the same category as Wikipedia, and practically suggested that Wikipedia could solve all its financial problems overnight by running AdSense. Both Mozilla Foundation and Wikipedia have the same tax exemption status.

Here's the kicker: I'm convinced that Mozilla should have declared the Google revenue as "unrelated business income" and paid taxes on it. In 2004 they considered this Google revenue to be tax-exempt. We're talking about a good chunk of change here -- adding together federal and state tax, it's in the neighborhood of a 40 percent tax rate on this income.

I don't care if Wikipedia runs ads. But if they think they can pull a "Mozilla" at the same time (remember, Jimmy is a libertarian, which means he doesn't believe governments should tax corporations or help its citizens), then I'm going to be very, very upset.

[Lir]

then I'm going to be very, very upset.

I'm already upset; Jimbo hasn't done anything to create Wikipedia, and he is claiming all the credit -- what articles did he edit?

[Golbez]

Here's the kicker: I'm convinced that Mozilla should have declared the Google revenue as "unrelated business income" and paid taxes on it. In 2004 they considered this Google revenue to be tax-exempt. We're talking about a good chunk of change here -- adding together federal and state tax, it's in the neighborhood of a 40 percent tax rate on this income.

Ooh, do I see a mozilla-watch.com in our future?