Online "encyclopedia" is more valuable than ? Raises $6 Million

According to the Associated Press (see Chicago Tribune version here) Wikipedia has met its fundraising goal of $6 million, and, six months earlier than expected.

Pardon me but.....yes, I occasionally refer to Wikipedia - mostly for non-essential tidbits.  Yes, I think an on-line encyclopedia/dictionary of everything that anyone can offer an opinion about facts or not can be helpful and useful.  No, I do not think this is a more valuable service than say...healthcare, heating or food for the poor. There are actually a whole lot of causes and concerns I think are more important that what Wikipedia has to offer the world.  And yet, there are enough others who think differently. 

Let us agree to disagree while recognizing that if $6 million is accessible for this cause, how much more funds must be available for the causes that affect the day-to-day lives of those who suffer from human and natural causes.

Comments

[Thomas]

Obviously there is no dispute that unmet human needs are a greater concern than MANY MANY enterprises that receive funding in our world, both inside and outside the nonprofit sector. However, using the fundraising success of a nonprofit organization whose well-executed mission you don't even fully acknowledge (and perhaps don't understand) as an example of the mis-allocation of resources is completely absurd.

Additionally, you have no way of knowing exactly how many donors to the Wikimedia Foundation would in fact suggest that what the Foundation offers the world is more important than the issues you cite or others. Many of them probably gave to Wikimedia and other nonprofits as well, perhaps even some in the human services sector, and some at greater levels. And Wikimedia's support and leadership in the development and maintenance of MediaWiki provides a robust, well-tested, open source wiki tool in use by many nonprofits, including some who work on those human needs issues: http://www.reviewingaids.com/awiki/index.php/Main_Page

[Gregory Kohs]

“We’re over the moon happy,” said Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Yeah, I’m sure she is. Nobody seems to realize (or care) that she budgeted over $470,000 in salary for herself in 2009, along with her boy-wonder Deputy Director, Erik Moeller. You know, he’s the guy who stood before a conference assembled in Berlin to tell them that “nonviolent child pornography does no harm”. He was hired without Gardner posting a job description for the Deputy Director position, nor conducting a competitive candidate search for the post.

I wonder which 14,600 donors accounted for the Gardner/Moeller salary fund? Did they intend for their money to go to their wallets, or did they think they were donating to a “shoestring” operation devoted to free knowledge. I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, in THIS economy, budgeting $472,000 to pay just two people is excessive.

Furthermore, nobody seems to care that LAST YEAR, they begged for $2,573,000 for Technology, but then they ended up spending only $900,000 on Technology for the year. So… if Wikipedia can run on $900,000 worth of servers and bandwidth, why the $6 million budget?

Do the math, kids.

Non-paid volunteers basically “run” Wikipedia, and always have. So the Wikimedia Foundation staff exists for what? I’m thinking they exist for the purpose of raising funds to pay themselves. And that’s why I’m so concerned we haven’t seen any philanthropy watchdog organizations (like CharityNavigator.org) conduct one of their ratings reviews of the Wikimedia Foundation. There is NO WAY they would receive a coveted 5-star rating. They’re spending their money on everything BUT the services that fulfill the mission.

Mike Burns, trust that this WAS indeed a good question for you to pose. It’s just sad that most of the readers drawn here by the "Wikipedia" metatag are going to be too naive to fully understand it.

[Gregory Kohs]

Correction, above should have read "4-star rating", as that is the highest that Charity Navigator goes.

[Taiwan Ben]

As the first commenter pointed out, the Wikimedia foundation's other main goal (besides hosting all the different Wikipedias, Wikibooks, Wiktionary, etc.) is to maintain and develop the MediaWiki open source software. The various Wikipedia projects are run by unpaid volunteers (I'm one of them), but they do it with the support of professional developers continually improving and updating that software. And that software is used all over the web. So, essentially what that 6 million dollars is supporting is the development of one of the most widely-used pieces of collaborative software, so that other non-profits (or anyone, for that matter) can use it for free. So compare that 6 million bucks with what the world spends on Windows operating systems in one year. Suddenly, six million sounds like pocket change.