Talk:Finance department

Hi,

today is May 23, 2006 and the newest figures I can see in Foundation:Finance report are Q3 05. Please let your donators know what's going on.

212.213.204.99 01:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

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Hello,

when will the budget for 2006 public? What about the Bank history for 2005 and 2006. The last numbers are from Juli 2005.

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Hello,

Why do you have about $500 quarterly "domain name" expenses in the 2005 budget? That is enough to maintain at least 200 full domains. How many domains do you use? I cannot see more then 10.

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I have actually donated a couple of times in the past, and I'd love to see where my money is going. Please publish your latest budgets... --24.10.240.211 05:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

historical?

I suppose this page is rather historical since

• bookkeeping is now handled by the Office, not by volunteer(s)
• fundraising is cared by a separate Committee, fundcom

So I guess if we can tag this page with template:Historical ... Thoughts? Aphaia 23:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

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Travel Expenses

Hello,

I don't want to sound critical but I looked at the latest accounts and $75,000 seems a fair amount of money to spend in one year on travel expenses. I was wondering if this could be clarified a little. It might be that I am just not aware of what 'Projects' do with regard to global travel or am out of touch with the price of airline tickets...

Thanks

I'd like more information as well. How was the $107,122 on salary, $114,589 on "in-kind expenses, $47,777 on "operating", and $76,545 on travel spent? These add up to $346,033- a $260,745 increase over the $85,288 from last year. What new projects can this extra $260k be attributed to? Johnpseudo 18:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed that this is one thread there have been no answers to... how can you expect us to support this without answering to your donors on how the funds are spent? In 06/07, your travel expenses where a little over half of your annual salary. This is extremely high, and we would like clarification on how this was necessary. (calgarydatagirl 11:59, 2 Jan 2010)

Rising Costs

A budget of over six million? Only 2% of this went on long term investments (hardware). Why the massive cost increase? 2003-4 $23,463 2004-5 $177,670 2005-6 $791,907 2006-7 $2,077,843 2007-8 $3,540,724 2008-9 ~$6,000,000

Why do they need all the extra management staff while they didn't before?

Thanks

PDF

The PDF http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf is down. --89.49.69.122 01:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The link seems fine right now. Here's a direct link to the file which should work Wikimedia 2007 fs.pdf. --Az1568 17:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Missing budget item

Dear Foundation Management: Why do you have no budget items for directly downloading Wikipedia's information into my brain? Please correct this omission. Thank you. Hair Pilot 07:22, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Seconded! I don't want a neural interface, but a synthetic speech option for desktop and mobile when people don't have access to a Kindle would be great. 99.34.78.140 03:50, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's very visible touchy-feely donation requests have motivated me to really question why they need $10 million. WHile I expect some fund raising, an annual operating budget of $10 mil appears a bit steep for what we assumed was just data organization, server space and bandwidth costs.

After all, users are under the impression that all the content and work to input the content comes FROM users for FREE. Maybe you should run an article on WHY you need a staff of 35+ people and WHY (since they believe in WIkipedia's spirit and motto to be mostly a charitable endeavor to bring knowledge to the whole world why they accept such high salaries (average of $85,000/year http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a3/2009-10_Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan_FINAL_July2.pdf)...if they wanted such high salaries they could go work for a for-profit company.

It appears to me that since Wikipedia knows it can get plenty of funding (as probability would dictate based upon that vast numbers of users that use it - 300 million/month) Budget planners at Wikipedia appear to be expanding the budget unjustifiably and irresponsibly (living high on the hog as it were) in response to the huge source of money that is out there for the asking. Prudent, socially responsible and most of all, moral, fiscal management dictates operating in exactly the opposite way.

The management/spending patterns of Wikipedia "company" do not match the humanitarian and altruistic front that Wikipedia gave me the impression it stood for. It appears your corporation is just asking for money without exposing enough of its internal workings for donators to make an honest evaluation if Wikipedia really NEEDS money.

I recommend putting the gross earnings (including bonuses, travel expense accounts, and project expenses, etc.) of the average employee on your fundraising "commercials" to let people know what they are primarily donating for - salaries, NOT information content. People think they are giving money for the content..but the content would be submitted even if your budget was $2 mil or $5 mil because it is given for free by users. Users also correct the accuracy of the content.

I am sorry to have formed such a suspicion but the exorbitant salaries and spending that is occurring under the "shell" of a free and charitable encyclopedia raises my suspicions. Disclose employee salaries and perks on your donation commericals to inform donators what they are paying for! You should all take a lesson from the way Craigslist is run..lean and mean.

= Totally Agree - I have a nasty mental picture of Jimmi Wales driving off from his swanky new office in San Fransisco to the airport to catch his first-class seat to the "conference" in the Seychelles in his company Mercedes SLK500 (pimped), talking on his Vertu hand-set & laughing to himself about the quantity of "contributions" being pledged to his "non-profit" organisation......

Yeah, Yeah - He reckons that a "buffer" of 6.0 mUSD is required for a NPO of this size is to operate for a year... Then says that some NPO's keep a reserve for 3 years operating. Sounds like he waiting to get the 18 mUSD in an account in the Cayman Islands, then do a runner.... Lovely old job... Keep those donations coming......