Why does Wikipedia need 6 million dollars?
Asked by
monsoon (
2528
)
November 12th, 2008
When I go to Wikipedia.org, they have a banner at the top asking for donations, and say that their goal is to reach six million dollars. I didn’t find any link to any page indicating what for, perhaps it’s something obvious that I’m not seeing, but I don’t know. Six million dollars is a lot of money, I just can’t see how their expenses could be that much.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
13 Answers
So they can buy the same $100,000 hammers that the government uses.
My best guess:
Wikipedia is operated and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501©(3) tax exempt charitable corporation based in San Francisco, California. In the United States, you may deduct donations from your federally-taxable income.
As a non-profit organization with a core value of transparency, the Wikimedia Foundation is committed to communicating with our volunteers, donors, and stakeholders in an open, accountable, and timely manner.
You can view the balance sheet here (warning PDF)
And that is a few years old. Note the growth they have undergone.
Thanks for the link jsc3791. My search for current reports didn’t work.
$6 million dollars is a paultry sum in comparison to the number of people that use Wikipedia. If every user just chipped in $1, they’d raise that amount in less than a day. I donated $20.
Good point paradoxer! Lurve for you!
Wikipedia.org is the 8th most visited internet. Prior to contrary belief – the internet is NOT free. Power is not free, datacenters and computers aren’t free.
Wikipedia uses around 300 servers (which is peanuts compared to the other sites in the sort of scale). Assuming these are fairly high end servers lets assume $6000 each for the hardware. That is $1.8 million in hardware, which has around a 2 year shelf life. Assume linear growth of 20% per year and that is $500k / year just in the computer hardware.
Of course that does no count the people to install them, the power, or the bandwidth. They could chew through $6 million in their sleep.
Honestly, I would not be surprised if they could chew through $60 million
Maintaining servers, compensate employees that help maintain the site.
I’m sure there are other costs too.
i wouldnt mind giving if they actually bothered saying what its for!!! its kind of arrogant and rude of them to NOT let anyone know.
maybe its a practical joke to see how many suckers will give!!
but really, how hard can it be to simply let us know what they want it for and give a description of the running costs or where its going to be spent.
hosting and admin is probably their only major costs, 6million seems a bit high!! (especially as you get massive economy of scale discounts when you are a big company.
Being tax exempt doesn’t mean that Wikipedia doesn’t make money, only that it doesn’t have to pay taxes. Keep the money in your pocket.
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
