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People give to Wikipedia for many different reasons. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, ensures that every donation we receive is invested back into serving Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and our free knowledge mission.
While many visit Wikipedia on a daily basis, it’s not always obvious what it takes to make that visit possible. Here are 7 reasons to donate to the Foundation that also clarify who we are, what we do, and why your donations matter:
- We’re a nonprofit, and readers and donors around the world keep us independent.
Many people are surprised to learn that Wikipedia is hosted by a nonprofit organization. It is actually the only website in the top-ten most-visited global websites to be run by a nonprofit. That’s important because we are not funded by advertising, we don’t charge a subscription fee, and we don’t sell your data. The majority of our funding comes from donations ($11 is the average) from people who read Wikipedia. Many see fundraising messages on Wikipedia and give through those. This model preserves our independence by reducing the ability of any one organization or person to influence the content on Wikipedia.
We’ve long-followed industry best practices for nonprofits and have consistently received the highest ratings by nonprofit groups like Charity Navigator for financial efficiency and transparency. We also publish annual reports about our finances and fundraising that are open for anyone to review.
- Wikipedia serves millions of readers and runs at a fraction of the cost of other top websites.
Wikipedia is viewed more than 15 billion times every month. We have the same (if not higher) levels of global traffic as many other for-profit internet companies at a fraction of the budget and staffing.
Nearly 650 people work at the Wikimedia Foundation. The majority work in product and technology ensuring quick load times, secure connections, and better reading and editing experiences on our sites. They maintain the software and infrastructure on which we operate some of the world’s most multilingual sites with knowledge available in over 300 languages. While our mission and work are unique, by comparison, Google’s translation tool currently supports 243 languages; Meta has more than 70,000 employees; and Reddit has about 2,000 employees.
- Reader donations support the technology that makes Wikipedia possible and improvements to how people read, edit, and share knowledge on Wikipedia.
Around half of our budget goes directly towards maintaining Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This supports the technical infrastructure that allows billions of visits to Wikipedia monthly, including a new data center in Brazil that decreased loading times across Latin America. It also supports the staff who play a vital role in contributing to the maintenance of our systems, including site reliability engineering, software engineering, security, and other roles.
Because Wikipedia is available in over 300 languages, it needs top-notch multilingual technology to ensure readers and editors can view and contribute knowledge in their preferred language. Funding also helps with improvements to the user experience on Wikipedia and supporting the growth of global volunteer editor communities to increase knowledge on the site, so that it remains relevant, accurate, and useful.
- We’re evolving to meet new needs in a changing technology landscape and respond to new global threats.
If you regularly visited Wikipedia in our first decade, there was a good chance you’d get an error message at some point. Because of our steady investments in technology, that’s no longer the case—Wikipedia now handles record-breaking spikes in traffic with ease, preventing any disruption to the reading or editing experience.
We’re also adapting to meet new challenges, including sophisticated disinformation tactics and threats of government censorship, as well as cybersecurity attacks and changes to how the internet is governed. New security protocols limit the potential for attackers to take advantage of our sites, while our legal staff help to protect our free knowledge mission.
More than half of our traffic now comes from mobile devices. AI training models, voice-activated devices, and websites increasingly leverage Wikipedia to serve their users’ knowledge needs. We’re continuing to evolve to meet these preferences, including developing new experiments to learn more about how to reach new generations of readers and contributors in a changing internet.
- We manage our finances responsibly and balance Wikipedia’s immediate needs with long-term sustainability.
You probably don’t use your checking account in the same way you use a savings account. One is probably for more day-to-day expenses and the other is likely for emergencies, like if your car suddenly breaks down, or for long-term financial goals, like retirement.
It’s similar for nonprofits. We have two accounts that act like savings accounts for us. Our reserve is like a rainy day fund for emergencies, such as an economic crisis.
Our endowment is a long-term permanent fund. The investment income from the endowment supports the future of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. These funds are set aside for particular long-term purposes. However, we use the vast majority of the donations we receive from Wikipedia readers to support the current work we are doing that year.
Sustaining healthy financial reserves and having a working capital policy is considered a best practice for organizations of all types. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors defined our working capital policy to sustain our work and provide support to volunteers and Wikimedia affiliates—a global network of groups that support Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and the mission globally. It is also designed to cover unplanned expenses, emergencies, or revenue shortfalls. The policy enables us to have sufficient cashflow to cover our expenses throughout the year.
- Supporting Wikipedia means you’re helping it become more representative of all the world’s knowledge.
The Wikimedia Foundation supports individuals and organizations around the world with funding to increase the diversity, reach, quality, and quantity of free knowledge on Wikipedia. Over the last four years, we have given over $55 million to members of the volunteer Wikimedia community in over 90 countries.
While we recognize there are still big gaps to fill, the knowledge on Wikipedia has become more globally representative of the world, as have the editors that contribute to the site. For example, the community of volunteer editors in Sub-Saharan Africa has grown by 44% percent since 2020. This is because of steady programmatic efforts led by Wikimedia volunteers, affiliates, and others—many of whom have received funding, training, and other support from the Foundation.
Why does global representation of Wikipedia volunteer editors matter? It matters because Wikipedia is a reflection of the people who contribute to it. Diverse perspectives create higher quality, more representative, and relevant knowledge for all of us.
- Contributions from readers keep us going.
The humans who give back to Wikipedia—whether through donations, words of support, edits, or through the many other ways people contribute—inspire us every day. All of us here at the Wikimedia Foundation want to take this opportunity to thank them. We’d like to share some of our favorite messages from donors over the years. We hope they move you as much as they have moved us:
“Wikipedia has been an endless sea of adventure for my curious soul. Where I had been admonished throughout my childhood for asking ‘stupid questions’, what you do has been a safe space for me to satisfy all curiosity and to foster a skill for learning my entire life now.
What stories will be told of you hundreds of years from now I cannot imagine. An endless Alexandria, every one of you a part of something that is sure to be treasured for as long as humanity draws breath.”
Donor from Ireland
“Thank you so much. Because what I am today in my life, it is only possible because of knowledge I have got from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is part of our life. It is emotion. Internet without Wikipedia is like a body without [a] soul. Thank you for being with us and keep enlighten[ing] our minds.”
Donor from India
We hope that we helped to deepen your understanding about how important reader donations are to Wikipedia. If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ.
If you are in a position to give, you can make a donation to Wikipedia at donate.wikimedia.org.
Lisa Seitz-Gruwell is the Chief Advancement Officer and Deputy to the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on 3 November 2022. Several data points, figures, and links were updated on 23 October 2023 and again in November 2024.
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