Wikimedia Foundation annual report 2010–11

Summary

November 2011

Back in January 2001, few people could have imagined the extraordinary impact of what was then just a tiny project driven by a big idea.

But ten years later, we find ourselves at the center of a free knowledge movement built around our flagship project, Wikipedia, which has become the most important collaboratively created repository of knowledge in history.

Today, Wikimedia volunteers around the world work in more than 280 languages to document the stories of their communities and cultures, past and present. During 2011, for example, hundreds of volunteers contributed to the articles on the Arab Spring rebellions, capturing one of the major stories of our time as it unfolded.

The Wikimedia Foundation is part of a broad global network of individuals, organizations, chapters, clubs and communities who together work to create Wikipedia, the most powerful example of volunteer collaboration and open content sharing in the world today. In 2010–11, the bulk of the Foundation’s spending was focused towards putting in place solid technical and organizational infrastructure. In 2011–12, the majority of spending goes towards growing, strengthening and increasing the diversity of the editing community, simplifying our wiki-editing interface, making investments to grow the projects’ readers and editors in key geographic areas such as India, Brazil and the Middle East and North Africa, and improving our presence on mobile devices.

Over the past year, more than 500,000 people donated to the Wikimedia Foundation, giving us more than $23 million USD. Thank you for your incredible generosity, and for your outpouring of support and love for Wikipedia and its sister projects, enabling the work of nearly 100,000 active editors. We owe you a huge debt of gratitude.

The Wikimedia Foundation especially wants to thank the editing community. Your work is essential, and it is what donors are enjoying and supporting: thank you for everything you do. A big thanks as well to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and Advisory Board, and a warm welcome to our new Advisory Board members Veronique Kessler and Jessamyn West.

Sincerely,

Sue Gardner, Executive Director

Ting Chen, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

Wikimania 2010

Wikimedians converge in the birthplace of Solidarność

Nobel Peace Prize Winner and former President of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, a frequent Wikipedia user, sent his greetings to this year's Wikimania gathering.

The sixth annual Wikimania, the global conference of Wikimedians, took place in the Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk. Poland succeeded Argentina and Egypt, the hosting countries in the previous two years. During three days, Wikimedians got together to celebrate the free knowledge movement, to meet their collaborators in their year-round online work on Wikipedia and its sister projects, and to share insights informing the continuing evolution of the projects. Foundation travel scholarships enabled Wikimedians from 39 countries to participate.

On the conference T-shirts, the motto “Free Knowledge in the City of Freedom” tied Wikimedia values to the history of Gdańsk, where the Solidarność movement had defied communist rulers in the 1980s — led by Lech Wałęsa, who sent his greetings to Wikimania attendees, noting that he was a frequent user of Wikipedia.

Governance and Chapters

Board of Trustees

Ting Chen, Chair

Jimmy Wales, Founder

Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice-chair

Phoebe Ayers, Executive Secretary

Stu West, Treasurer

Bishakha Datta

Matt Halprin

Samuel Klein

Arne Klempert

Kat Walsh

Advisory Board

Angela Beesley

Ward Cunningham

Florence Devouard

Melissa Hagemann

Mimi Ito

Mitch Kapor

Veronique Kessler

Neeru Khosla

Teemu Leinonen

Nhlanhla Mabaso

Rebecca MacKinnon

Wayne Mackintosh

Benjamin Mako Hill

Roger McNamee

Domas Mituzas

Trevor Neilson

Craig Newmark

Achal Prabhala

Clay Shirky

Michael Snow

Jing Wang

Jessamyn West

Ethan Zuckerman

Executive Director

Sue Gardner

Wikimedia chapters

During 2010–11, Wikimedia’s network of volunteer-driven international chapters grew from 30 to 35. Wikimedia’s chapters, which are independent from the Wikimedia Foundation, are made up of local members and directors, and in some cases employees. They focus on region-specific work. Typically, that work includes building awareness of Wikimedia projects, handling media inquiries, staging public outreach events, and forming partnerships with local educational and cultural organizations.

Chapters as of November 2011

AR Wikimedia Argentina

AT Wikimedia Österreich (Austria)

AU Wikimedia Australia

BD Wikimedia Bangladesh

CA Wikimedia Canada

CH Wikimedia CH (Switzerland)

CL Wikimedia Chile

CZ Wikimedia Česká republika (Czech Republic)

DE Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany)

DK Wikimedia Danmark (Denmark)

EE Wikimedia Eesti (Estonia)

ES Wikimedia España (Spain)

FI Wikimedia Suomi (Finland)

FR Wikimédia France

GB Wikimedia UK (United Kingdom)

HK 香港維基媒體協會 (Hong Kong)

HU Wikimédia Magyarország (Hungary)

ID Wikimedia Indonesia

IL ويكيمديا اسرأييل, ויקימדיה-ישראל (Israel)

IN Wikimedia India

IT Wikimedia Italia (Italy)

MK Викимедија Македонија (Macedonia)

MO Wikimedia Macau

MX Wikimedia México

NL Wikimedia Nederland (Netherlands)

NO Wikimedia Norge (Norway)

PH Wikimedia Philippines

PL Wikimedia Polska (Poland)

PT Wikimedia Portugal

RS Викимедија Србије (Serbia)

RU Викимедиа РУ (Russia)

SE Wikimedia Sverige (Sweden)

TW 中華民國維基媒體協會 (Taiwan)

UA Вікімедіа Україна (Ukraine)

US DC Wikimedia District of Columbia

US NYC Wikimedia New York City

VE Wikimedia Venezuela

ZA Wikimedia South Africa

Contributors

The Wikimedia Foundation benefits from its unique global community of volunteer editors and financial contributors. We thrive due to the vital support we receive from this community, which in 2010–11 made over 155 million edits and over 500,000 financial contributions. Going forward, we intend to continue to serve this worldwide community with every resource at our command.

$1 million +

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Stanton Foundation

Anonymous

$100,000 – $999,999

The Brin Wojcicki Foundation

David and Jamie Cummings

The Ford Foundation

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Omidyar Network

The James and Angela Thompson Foundation

$25,000 - $99,999

The Craigslist Charitable Fund

John N. Caulkins

The Google Matching Gifts Program

The Kaphan Foundation

The Shor Family Foundation

Two Sigma Investments, LLC

Yardi Systems, Inc.

Anonymous (4)

$5,000 – $24,999

Andras Konya, Jr.

Annette J. Campbell-White

The Apple Pickers Foundation

The Arlene & Arnold Goldstein Family Foundation

Armen Avanessians

The Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation

Brian Kim

Casey DeGroot

Christopher Ruddy

Craig Hatkoff

Djordje Jankovic

Elon Musk

Galip Tomac

Goldman, Sachs, and Company Matching Gifts Program

Ilja Pljusnin

J. Willis Jarvis

Jeff Hartline

Jeffrey Dauber

Jeffrey Weber

Jeremy Coller

John Baldridge

John Doerr

John Little

Kaz Foundation for Social Advancement

Kevin O'Shea

Kevin Shepherd

The King and Linda Won Family Fund

Laurent Drion

Leon David Michaud

Liam Connell

The Madan Family Gift Fund

The Marc Haas Foundation

Marco Teubner

Margo Seltzer and Keith Bostic

Mattias Söderhielm

Mehrdad Golabgir

The Microsoft Matching Gifts Program

Milonja Bjelic

Neil Riordan

The Nora Roberts Foundation

Paul Spraos

Peter Macaulay

Purnendu Ojha

Ron Unz

Ruslan Panasovskyi

The Ruth and David Levine Charitable Fund

Sarah Wesley

Sean Lennon

Shabbir Moosabhoy

Shvat Shaked

The Sigrid Rausing Trust

The Skowronski Family Foundation

Srinivasan Krishnan

Stephen B. Ippolito

Susan Petersmeyer

Tripling Elephants

Anonymous (4)

$1,000 – $4,999

Aaia Nugent

Aase Lindahl

Abdul Bin laden

Abdulla Al-Thani

Abdulmajeed Alshatti

The Academy Place Foundation

Adam Fila

The Adam J. Weissman Foundation

Adobe Matching Gifts Program

Ajay Goel

Akash Jain

Alan Dunn

Alan Gorenberg

Alan Weiner

Albert James Hudspeth

Albert Shahugian

Alex Blavatnik

Alex Hsu

Alex Poon

Alexander Polsky

Alexander Rousmaniere

Alfred Zimmermann

Alisa Oleary

Alistair Woodman

Allan Stephan

The Amont Foundation, Inc.

Andrew Hillstrom

Andrew Kraft

Angela K. Hodge

Anna Scott

Anna Wodynski

Anup Mantri

Arthur Hunter

Aspera, Inc.

Ayco Charitable Foundation

B. S. Ramamurtie

Beauchamp Place Communications Inc.

The Behemoth

The Bell Family Foundation

The Belmonte Foundation

The Ben Williams Fund

Bernard Halim

Bernhard Friess

Betty Gerlack

BiblioLabs, LLC

Bill McCune

Boris Kontsevoi

Brad Wilson

Bradford Sherburne

Brandon Kopetzky

Brian Burnim

Brian McInnis

Brian Potter

Brian White

The Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation Matching Gifts Program

The Brooks Family Foundation

Burada Iulian

Burt Cutler

The Caithness Foundation

Carla Flournoy

Caroline Hu

Catherine L. Leung

Cedar Street Advisors

Charles Gibbs

Charles Smith-Dewey

The Chevron Humankind Matching Gifts Program

Christine A. Molinaro

Christine Herget

Christopher Jannuzzi

Christopher J. Lingle

Christopher Turner

Chuck Silvers

Claude Blackburn

The Coleman Foundation

The CYLA Charitable Fund

Cynthia Boyd

Dalibor Antonic

Dave McComb

David Agraz

David Brauer

David Bunton

David Bydeley

David Cline

David Dacus

David Fischer

David Harris

David Hitz

David Humm

David K. Donald

The David L. and Marilyn S. Wenner Fund

David Peltz

David S. Starr

Derrick Strickland

The Dillon Fund

Dimitrios Staikos

Dirk Pranke

Djordje Jankovic

Dmitry Sagalovskiy

Domas Mituzas

Don Garrett

Don Husby

Don Melton

Donald Jaycox

Doron Daveed Ben-Avi

Doug Jaffe

The Douglas B. Marshall, Jr. Family Foundation

Douglas Durst

Douglas Ferguson

Drew Perkins

The Drexler Estate Fund

Dustin Frazier

Dylan Parker

Earl Hemphill

Eben Moglen

Edna Sugihara

The Elbrun and Peter Kimmelman Family Foundation, Inc.

Elecia White

Elisabeth Bylund

Greg and Liz Lutz

Emil Biendara

Emmanuel Balseca

Eric Lee

Eric Stokes

Eric Yao

Erich Hoop

Ethel W. Moore

Florin Miron

Francisco Sampaio

Francois Delori

Frank Brunckhorst

Frank Rothacker

Franz Heinsen

Franziska Bodmer Mancia

Fred Hipp

Frost Bank

Gabe Newell

Gavin Moodie

The Geisel Family Foundation

George T. Anagnost

Gerald Jay Sussman

Graeme Birchall

The Graham Weston Gift Fund

The Grainger Matching Gifts Program

Graphics Press, LLC

Green Bicycle Fund

Greg Grass

Greg Hendershott

Gregory Richards

H.M. Koo

Heather Bendler

The Highland Vineyard Foundation

Hiromasa Nagase

Holger Madsen

The Houser Foundation

Howard Ahmanson

The HP Company Foundation Matching Gifts Program

The Huber Gift Fund

Hugh Glenister

Iain McClatchie

Iqbal Shamsul

Irene and Richard Van Slyke

J. Michael Miller

Jacob Albrecht

Jacqueline Shelburne

James Cogbill, Jr.

James Mason

James McClave

James O'Shaughnessy

James Ward

Janet DeNicola

Jaroslav Verchkovski

Jawaad Mahmood

Jay Flatland

The Jeff and Linda Hendricks Family Foundation

Jeffrey Feddersen

Jeffrey Krug

Jeffrey Lamkin

Jelly Vision Inc.

Jennifer King

Jennifer Lazuka

Jesse Ausubel

The Jewish Community Endowment Fund

Don and Jill Knuth

Jim Hobart

Jimmy Janacek

Joan Sherman

Jochen Titus

John Dove

John E. Peters

John Eckstein

John Hughes

John McKnight

John Nelson

John O'Connor

John Powell

John Rowley

John Stanford, Jr.

Jonathan Tobert

Jordan Hare

Jose Trejo

Josef Frick

Joseph Brandt

Joseph Sokal

Joshua Eckhardt

Joshua Guberman

Jude Montassir

Juergen Wagentrotz

Jules Bernstein and Linda Lipsett

Julie Johnson

Julien Basch

Kanghao Lu

Karen Lawrence

Karine Joly

Katharine Brigham

Katherine Erickson

Keah Yong Heng

Keith Tyson

Kenneth Eddings

Kevin Arpe

Kevin C. Hammond

Kevin Cheng

Ki Yan Karen Lo

Kim Henry

Kim Spitznagel

Kim Stowers

Kimberley Harding

Kimberly Mayfield

The Koppelman Family Foundation

Kristine M. Lung

Kuang-Hsiang Lin

Kurt Ackermann

L. David Mirkin, M.D.

Lars Markhus

Lars Petter Mathiassen

Las Vegas Hotels

Laurel Touby

Laurence Boyd

Laurie Pitman

Lawrence D. Cavanagh, Jr.

Lee Elder

Lee Hong Gerald Yu

Lenore C. Cooney

Leonard Ferrera

Linda L. Slakey

Linda Lee

Linda Weitz

Lisa Tung

Lone Pine Capital, LLC

Lowell Wood

The Louie-Marsh Family Fund

Luís Norberto Pascoal

Luke A. Knowles

M. Hepel

Maho Kokuryo

Manisha her

Marc Forand

Marc Heinz

Marc Labelle

Marcello Cattaneo Adorno

Margaret Raymond

Marilyn Lucht

Marilyn Simons

Marius Bakken

Mark Feldberg

Mark Heising and Elizabeth Simons

Mark Leonard

Mark Melton

Mark Waber

Masazumi Miyagawa

Mathew Donovan

Matthias Dietrich

Mehmet Betil

Melissa A. Chilton

Michael and Debbie Koss

Michael Hodnett

Michael J. Fine

Michael Marcus

Michael Matera

Michael Pryor

Michael Swart

Michael Terry

Michael Totten

Mikhail Degtiarev

Mikhail Seregine

The Million Children Foundation

Minjen Mao

Mohammed Al Nahyan

Mohan Pandit

The Moorhead Family Fund

Murtada Elkhalifa

Nadir Godrej

Nancy Cornelius

National Philanthropic Trust

The Neal and Elizabeth Weber Fund

Nicholas Fink

Nicholas Riesland

Nicole Ingeborg Lieger

Nora Klein

The Nord Family Foundation

Oisin Crawley

Oliver Wright

Omer Ayfer

The Oracle Corporation Matching Gifts Program

ORX

Patrick Condon

Paul Haahr

Paul Harvey

Paul von Kuster

Paul Wilmes

Pavel Kostenko

Pawel Ciszewski

Peter A. Wiringa

Peter Francati

Peter J. Enyeart

Peter Swiecicki

Peter Ungar

Petr Jirous

The Philip and Julia Meshberg Family Foundation

Philip Mateescu

Philip Perlman

The PMJJ Harmon Foundation

The Pond Family Foundation Trust

Pooja P. Rutberg

Pradeep Sindhu

R. G. Geisler

Raghavan Srinivasan

Rahul Bhadani

Ramamoorthi Bhaskar

Rasheed Aleid

Rau Abari

Ravi Kalidindi

The Raymond Family Foundation

Rebecca Reynolds

Reuben E. Last

Richard Kandarian

Richard Saada

Richard Yonash

Rob Napier

Robert Ashcroft

Robert Capps

Robert Kaplan

Robert M. Chin

Robert Prestezog

Robert Ruderman

Robert Thomas

Robert W. Roper

Rohan Murty

Rory O'Connor

Rosanne Cerello

Roy H. Jablonka

The Royce Family Foundation

Rutherford Gong

Ryusuke Koyama

Sadao Milberg

Samuel Klein, Jr.

The San Diego Foundation

Sara Smollett

Sarah Alfadl

Sathien Tejapaibul

The Sawa Family Charitable Fund

Scott Coulter

Scott Jensen

Scott Johns

Scott Johnston

Scott R. Knight

Seattle Foundation

Shamsa N.

Shon Harris

Sid Harth

Sienna Deano

The Skinner Fund

The Snyder White Oaks Foundation of Delaware

Sohei Machida

Spencer V. Pricenash

Stefan Edlis

Stefan Schwab

Stefan Winkler

Stephen C. Hecht

Stephen Gray

Steve Kass

Steven B. Schlossstein

Steven VanRoekel

Stuart Cheshire

Sudhir Sadalge

Susan Borden

Susan Woodward

Swiftrank Pte Ltd

Tahir Gozel

Takashi Kousaka

Takeshi Mano

Talal AlFaisal

Taner Halicioglu

Tetsuya Isozaki

Thai Tan Nguyen

Thomas Salander

Tilman Reinhardt

Timothy Mott

Timothy Robinson

Tomaso Renoldi Bracco

Torunn Birkeland

Tradebot Ventures, Inc.

Tuula Simell

The Vadasz Family Fund

Vadim Asadov

Victoria Walsh

Vijay Santhanam

Villazzo, LLC

Vinay Jain

Vincent Paquet

Warren Snaider

Whitney Robinson

The Wikimedia Foundation Staff

WIG Company

Wilford Reynolds

William B. Edwards

William Foster

William K. Rohwedder

William Lynch

William Wenheim

The Windmill Foundation

Xie Wu

The Yahoo! Matching Gifts Program

Yaso ITO

Yasuhiro Murakami

Yu-Chen Chen

Yudson Gondobintoro

Zoline Foundation

瑞霙洪

Anonymous (5)

Gifts in-kind

Cisco

comScore

Electronic Frontier Foundation

EvoSwitch

Exbrook Design

Kennisnet Amsterdam

Leaseweb

No Starch Press

Perkins Coie

Tele2

TeliaSonera International Carrier

WatchMouse

Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, & Rosati

Wikimedia chapters

Wikimedia Australia

Wikimedia Austria

Wikimedia Deutschland

Wikimedia France

Wikimedia Hungary

Wikimedia Netherlands

Wikimedia Sweden

Wikimedia Switzerland

Wikimedia United Kingdom

Financials

The Wikimedia Foundation continues to enjoy a stable base of revenue, stemming largely from its annual community giving campaign. In 2010–11, we doubled the number of small donors to over 500,000 individuals from all over the world. Now in the second year of our five-year strategic plan, we are hiring new staff members, increasing the capacity of our server network to deliver Wikipedia and our other projects to the world, and intensifying our efforts to expand the reach of our projects in the Global South through on-the-ground initiatives.

Where the money goes

Maintaining our site and improving our software Operations and engineering, purchasing servers, maintaining and improving our data center, internet hosting, and software development and product engineering.	$8,869,675	44%
Expanding our global reach Improving access to Wikipedia on mobile devices in the Global South, public and education outreach, support and grants for our global chapters.	$2,388,698	12%
Direct support to our volunteer community Researching community activity trends, increasing editor retention and recruitment, improving new technologies to help project editors.	$1,889,084	9%
Fundraising Planning and development of our annual giving campaign, global payment collection fees (including Paypal and other fees).	$2,142,217	11%
Board of Trustees and special projects Travel and professional development for our governing Board, as well as special research projects and initiatives to support the Wikimedia community.	$1,172,654	6%
Administration Benefits and related administration costs for Foundation staff, capital expenses, leases, training, travel, and other costs.	$3,636,236	18%
Total cash expenditures, including all capital purchases.	$20,098,564

Financial Performance

The Wikimedia Foundation’s 2010–11 fiscal year took place from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011. Throughout this report all financial data is reported in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.

Statement of Activities
*in thousand of dollars*
Description		Amount
Support and revenues
	Contributions	23,020
	Restricted contributions	666
	In-kind service revenue	350
	Investment income, net	37
	Other income, net	712
Total — revenue		24,785
Expenses
	Salaries and wages	7,312
	Awards and grants	471
	Internet hosting	1,800
	In-kind service expenses	350
	Operating expenses	5,761
	Travel	1,159
	Depreciation and amortization	1,001
	other expenses, including special events	36
Total — expenses		17,890

Increase in net assets		6,895

Balance Sheet
*in thousands of dollars*
Assets			Liabilities & Net Assets
	Cash and cash equivalents	12,026	Liabilities
	Contributions receivable	1,000		Accounts payable and accrued expenses	1,431
	Accounts receivable	695		Deferred revenue	375
	Investments	5,849		Other liabilities	168
	Prepaid expenses and other current assets	1,215		Total liabilities	1,974
	Total current assets	20,785	Net Assets
	Property, plant, and equipment	3,402		Unrestricted net assets	20,772
	Nonconcurrent portion of contributions receivable	1,979		Temporarily restricted net assets	3,420
				Total net assets	24,192

Total assets		26,166	Total liabilities and net assets		26,166

Who supports us

	2009-10	2010-11
Number of individual donors	261,339	573,568

219% Increase in total number of funding sources

$40.10 Average donation for 2010-11

The Wikimedia Foundation is a four-star rated charity according to Charity Navigator, America's premier independent charity evaluator.

Projects

The Wikimedia Foundation operates 11 free knowledge projects managed and built by a community of over 100,000 active volunteers.

Wikipedia® Free encyclopedia

The free encyclopedia containing more than 20.6 million articles in more than 280 languages. The most comprehensive and widely used reference work humans have ever compiled. 100,000 active volunteers contribute new content every month.

Wikimedia Commons™ Shared media repository

A repository of almost 13 million freely usable images, sound and video files, serving both Wikimedia’s projects and countless other educational and informational needs.

MediaWiki® Open-source wiki software

The leading open-source wiki software on the Internet which acts as the backbone for all of the Wikimedia Foundation’s wikis and thousands of other wiki communities.

Wikispecies™ Dictionary of species

Wikibooks™ Free textbooks and manuals

Wikinews® Free content news source

Wikiquote™ Collection of free quotations

Wiktionary® Dictionary and thesaurus

Meta-wiki™ Project coordination

Wikiversity™ Free learning tools

Wikisource® Free source documents

Index

Figures as of October 2011 unless otherwise stated

Unique visitors to Wikimedia Foundation sites, September 2011: 454 million
Language editions of Wikipedia: 282
Average number of new articles created daily, July 2010 through June 2011: 8,371
Number of articles across all Wikipedia language editions: 20.6 million
Number of edits to Wikipedia, July 2010 through June 2011: 139.3 million
Average monthly page views, July 2010 through June 2011: 13.6 billion

Acknowledgements

All images from the Wikimedia Commons are under a CC BY SA or public domain license unless otherwise stated. The content contained within the annual report is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v.3.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CC-BY-SA) or any later version. The trademarks and logos of the Wikimedia Foundation and any other organization are not included under the terms of this Creative Commons license. Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimania, Wikipedia, Commons, MediaWiki, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, and Meta-wiki are pending trademark registration or are registered trademarks of Wikimedia Foundation.

For more information, please see our Trademark Policy page, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_Policy. For other questions about our licensing terms or trademark policy, please email legalwikimedia.org.

Design by EXBROOK, San Francisco

Story consultant: David Weir

Visit http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
for a summary report of the 2010-11 Annual Report in French, Japanese, Spanish, German, Arabic, and Portuguese.

Strategic Priorities

Stabilize infrastructure

Increase participation

Improve quality

Increase reach

Encourage innovation

Wikimedia Foundation targets for 2015

Increase the total number of people served to 1 billion
Increase the number of Wikipedia articles we offer to 50 million
Ensure information is high quality by increasing the percentage of material reviewed to be of high or very high quality by 25 percent
Encourage readers to become contributors by increasing the number of total editors per month who made >5 edits to 200,000
Support healthy diversity in the editing community by doubling the percentage of female editors to 25 percent and increase the percentage of Global South editors to 37 percent