Just when you're trying to figure out the release date for the final season of Stranger Things, one of these banners pops up at the top of Wikipedia. Please don't scroll past this one-minute read. It's a little awkward to ask, but this Thursday we need your help.
It will soon be too late to help us in our fundraiser. Wikipedia is not for sale. We humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. 98% of our readers don't donate.
They simply look the other way. If you donate just three dollars, you would help keep Wikipedia thriving for years. That's right, the price of a cup of coffee is all we need. Please donate now. It really matters.
These banners exist in all kinds of languages. Wikipedia is asking for money all over the planet. Some of these wordings sound almost desperate. Like Wikipedia is on the brink of collapse.
Like one of the most amazing parts of the internet is about to shut down and urgently needs your cash injection to stay alive. But is that really true? What if Wikipedia was actually pretty rich? Wikipedia was founded on January 15, 2001 by entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and philosopher Larry Sanger. The original idea was to create an online encyclopedia with entries written by experts.
But the founders launched and tested an early version of the platform where anyone could add or edit articles. That concept turned out to be a massive hit. Today, Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world.
In summer of 2024, it racked up about 6.7 billion visits per month. The platform has more than 61 million articles with over 6.8 million pages in English alone. Since its inception, Wikipedia has never done ads.
The platform has mostly been funded by donations. But But these donations do not go to the millions of wiki editors who tirelessly write and edit the countless articles. They all do it for free. The money goes to the Wikimedia Foundation, or WMF for short.
That's the non-profit behind Wikipedia. In the beginning, the foundation mainly focused on keeping the site running and paying a few employees. Occasionally, some wiki editors were also given financial support for specific projects.
Then, in 2005, the foundation launched its first ever fundraising campaign. That was also the first time donation banners were used on the site. The initial goal was to raise $75,000.
It was surpassed by almost 20k. Just a few months later, the next fundraising goal was set at $200,000. And it was quickly met.
The campaigns became more frequent over the years. In 2010, Jimmy Wales was featured on many of the donation banners. His personal appeal was meant to encourage more people to give.
His face was suddenly everywhere on the platform. As a result, whales became a meme. Either way, Wikipedia started growing so fast that Wikimedia genuinely needed more money every year.
In 2013, the then-deputy director of the foundation estimated their budget needs to be around $10 million per year. He said that would cover the operating costs for the website, and allowed him to keep pushing Wikimedia's mission through other projects and initiatives. And over the last 10 years, Wikipedia has still been frequently asking for money around the globe. Some of these banners sound like Wikipedia and its independence were in danger.
Like the site could go offline at any moment. But is that true? Holscan is the sponsor of today's video and would definitely deserve its own Wikipedia page. The bio section would probably say that the Vienna-based designers are known for designing accessories that are sleek, stylish and sustainable. They started out creating unique watches made from natural elements like wood and stone, like this one or that one.
But that was just the beginning. Today, Holzkern also offers a range of accessories from jewelry to sunglasses and handbags, all crafted with an attention to natural detail and the environment. Through their small product line and their high-quality standards, they ensure a great longevity of their products.
What we really like is that each Holzkern piece is one of a kind, thanks to the unique grain and marbling of the organic materials. Plus, the wood used is either FSC-certified or upcycled, and the company actively supports reforestation projects. Check out Holscan and use the code FERNHK for an exclusive 10% off on all Holscan products. Let's look at India for a second. Two-thirds of the country's population live in poverty, surviving on less than $2 a day.
Yet, in 2020, Wikimedia's donation campaigns were asking for 150 Indian rupees. That's almost $1.80. The 2020 campaign urged people to defend Wikipedia's independence.
Users were asked to help keep Wikipedia online and growing. The banners made it sound like Wikipedia really depended on these donations. During the pandemic, a regular donor in the US was contacted by the Wikimedia Foundation via email.
They asked him to consider including the foundation in his will. The mail even included a direct link to a service that lets you draft a will in just 20 minutes. This is Andreas Kolbe.
He has been a volunteer editor at Wikipedia for over 15 years and is the former chief editor of The Signpost, an online newspaper within the Wikipedia movement. He has been criticizing the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising campaigns for years, especially wording suggesting that that may have been true 20 years ago, but it is far from accurate today. The Wikimedia Foundation is not struggling at all.
In fact, it's doing better than ever. Since its founding, the revenue has constantly been growing. During the fiscal year of 2223, the foundation raised roughly 165 million from over 13 million donations. The money comes from all over the world, but mostly from North America and Europe.
At the end of that same period, Wikimedia had net assets worth almost 255 million dollars. primarily in cash and investments like corporate bonds and treasury securities. On top of that, there's another $120 million in the so-called Wikimedia Endowment Fund, which is meant to ensure the access to free knowledge for future generations.
But right now, those are just more investments like stock funds aimed at generating profits. It's awkward to ask. And it's not embarrassing at all.
When I have so many millions in the bank, it's not embarrassing. It's shameless. Only a fraction of the donations are actually used to keep the site running. The foundation already has enough money to maintain the servers for well over 100 years.
If you invest some time to scroll through the website of the Wikimedia Foundation, you'll quickly see how well they're doing and where exactly the money goes. But the site currently only gets around 400,000 visits per month. compared to the 7 billion monthly visits on Wikipedia. Whoever reads those dramatic banners and decides to throw in a couple of bucks will most likely do so without digging deeper into the organization and getting the full picture. The contributions meant to help quote-unquote defend Wikipedia's independence mostly go to the 700 staff and contractors.
In 2023, the foundation spent over $100 million on salaries and benefits. $3.1 million went to the hosting of Wikipedia and its sister projects. Many of these employees do not work in IT. Their job is not to keep the website running smoothly. They work in marketing, administration, and finance.
To keep those donation campaigns running strong, the foundation employs a bunch of fundraising experts who specialize in exactly that. The foundation holds events and conferences all over the world. Money is spent on lobbying efforts. In 2023 alone, they also handed out $24 million in awards and grants.
Some of the money went to other organizations that are not part of Wikimedia but share similar goals. The money that came in changed the way the Wikimedia Foundation was supposed to work. The Wikimedia Foundation now wants to be much more than what it imagined back then. Today, the WMF has little in common with the neatly defined project from the early 2000s.
It now runs additional projects like the media archive Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, and even a species directory. There are also regional chapters like Wikimedia Mexico that focus on expanding articles in Spanish covering area-specific content. In 2021, the foundation launched a for-profit company called Wikimedia Enterprise. The goal is to give big tech companies easier access to Wikipedia content, whether it's through info boxes like these or through voice assistants like Alexa and Siri.
Wikimedia Enterprise is set to become a major new revenue stream for the foundation. We reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation for comment when first reporting on the subject in 2022. We asked them why some of their campaigns have been so desperate in tone. That was a main area of criticism at the time. The foundation didn't really give us a clear answer on that one.
However, they did emphasize that the WMF's reserve would only cover 16 months of operating costs for Wikipedia and its sister projects. We've already broken down what those operating expenses look like earlier in this video. The foundation also stressed that not everyone can afford to donate and that that's okay.
Regarding the campaigns in India, they said many Indians use the encyclopedia, and they just wanted to create opportunities for those who are willing and able to give. The current fundraising banners used in India also show that Wikipedia has lowered their suggested donation from 150 to 25 Indian rupees. The WMF added that they are constantly working to improve their fundraising effort and that they are in close touch with volunteers and community members. Obviously, it's totally fine to financially support Wikipedia.
It's one of the best things on the internet. But it's not like the platform is going offline tomorrow if you do not donate today. It'll most likely still be around in 10 or 20 years. Money-wise, the foundation is pretty well set for the future. And that's not a bad thing at all.
Wikimedia is a donation-funded foundation competing with services of major tech companies like Meta, Apple, and Amazon. And while hundreds of millions of dollars in assets may sound like a lot, it's peanuts compared to Google and the rest. Neither is it a bad thing to want to expand and start new projects.
We ourselves are regularly drawing on Wikimedia Commons for our videos. But why not be upfront about it? Why push so hard for donations, especially in developing countries like India?
Why pretend the website's independence is at risk? Is Wikipedia really considering running commercial ads? Or is that just clumsy marketing and emotional campaigning?
Some calls for donation asked people to donate in support of the volunteer editors. In several Wikimedia forums, editors have expressed disappointment with these kinds of actions. Some of them feel taken advantage of.
In 2023, Wikimedia did a survey among volunteer editors to ask them about their opinion on the last fundraising campaign. Almost all participants agreed. The whiny parts of those donation banners were misleading and inappropriate. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales joined the discussion that followed. It looks like Wikimedia has heard the message.
The foundation has started to actively collaborate with its community to co-create fundraising campaigns. They are currently running limited pretests for English banners and are considering suggestions from volunteers. We hope that Wikimedia will keep listening to that feedback and find an appropriate language for their global fundraising campaigns.
Because in the end, it's really the passion and support of all those volunteer editors that make Wikipedia so great and worth supporting.