Talk:Wikimedia Foundation reports/Financial/Audits/2020-2021 - frequently asked questions

Comments and questions

Please leave comments or questions on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Independent Auditors’ Report for the fiscal year ending 30 June 2021.

Form 990

Hello,

please publish the Form 990 for the last fiscal year earlier as you planned. After my understanding of the processes around filling out that form and creating a financial statement at the end of the year it is possible to do that faster. Can you please publish before the Form 990, the Form 8868, that is as far as I understand required to extend the time you have time to fill out the Form 990. Here is the link of the page where that is explained.[1] From my point of view you can see the discussion about an earlier publishing of Form 990 as a chance, to find through that potential where structured information can help make the filing faster, can be found. I see such processes as a chance to think about where is in that processes knowledge involved and suggest to think about what of these knowledge can be made availabe for the public. Please tell me if you have filed Form 8868 already and why it needs so long from the end of the fiscal year until you publish Form 990. What things do you only look at for the Form 990 and not for the financial statement. From my point of view it can be possible to structure the qestions within Form 990 and find for the most of these questions a structured way to answer them more easily. Other parts are tables and can be filled out after my understanding easily if the structure is clear. All people working for the Wikimedia Foundation should be able to understand what the impact of their work to the Form 990 is. So they can pay attention during their work and try to provide the required informations during the year so that at the end of the year there is not so much work needed until publishing it. At some parts there is a categorization of expenses needed and for that it is helpful to have free classification systems available. I can help you finding ways to make it possible to publish Form 990 earlier. In that topic I see potential to support through that the access to knowledge and thinking about what solutions are helpful to have for that and how they can be developed more easily without deeper programming knowledge and with free or Open Source Software.--Hogü-456 (talk) 21:34, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your question. We have filed form 8868 to extend the time we have to complete form 990 for fiscal year 2020-2021 and will publish the form 990 in May 2022. We appreciate your feedback on how we may improve this timeline in the future. SLangan (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@SLangan (WMF): can you please tell me what you have not yet analyzed that is needed for the Form 990. I will write at User:Hogü-456/Form 990 my Thoughts about the improvements I think that can be done to file Form 990 faster. So you can find my thoughts there. Please try to help to explain the data structures that are around specific topics that are part of the Form 990.--Hogü-456 (talk) 17:50, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Investment allocation

thank you for the more detailed financial statements. look forward to the increased transparency going forward.
could you comment on when you will be reporting on the endowment, with return on assets, and your asset allocation?
you remain predominantly in short term investments, over what is required for liquidity needs, forgoing investment income. please reconcile the conflicting statements: "Our goal is to have at least one year of operating funds"; "Our priority is to have at least 6-9 months of available cash liquidity" ; "The cash and investment balance of the Wikimedia Foundation on 30 June 2021 represents about 18 months of operating funds" --Slowking4 (talk) 14:39, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your question. The target of at least 6-9 months of cash liquidity is specifically for cash, while the target of at least 1 year of operating funds would include investments in addition to cash liquidity. We currently have more than that target given our growth, size, age, and the uncertainty of the COVID-19 environment. SLangan (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 27 January 2022 (UTC)