The Wikimedia Foundation published a financial report for the second half of 2010

Every year, the Wikimedia Foundation runs a campaign to collect donations. Millions of dollars are collected every year, but questions are often asked about what donations are spent on. General expenses are clear - servers, technical support, staff salaries - but many probably would like to know more specific information.

The Wikimedia Foundation publishes audited financial statements once a year. Starting from the 2007-2008 financial year, the fund also began to publish unaudited financial statements for the half year period.

Accordingly, the Wikimedia Foundation recently published (PDF) a financial report for the first six months of the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

The financial year in the fund lasts from July 1 to June 30, that is, this report covers the period from July 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010.
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According to the plan, by the end of the second quarter, current assets were to be 18.1 million dollars. The actual cash balance was $ 22.8 million.

During the period covered by this report, the fund received donations from 488,328 donors. The average size of the donation was 28.07 dollars.

At the beginning of the financial year, 47 employees worked in the fund, and the plan envisaged the admission of 44 more. Thus, the total number of employees was 91. However, such goals were perceived as excessive. In addition to the increase in the number of full-time employees, the foundation decided to also attract temporary employees, depending on the nature of the work. By the end of the half year, 69 employees worked in the fund, that is, their number increased by 22. However, many of them worked temporarily - during the fundraising campaign. It is expected that by the end of the fiscal year there will be 76 employees in the fund.

Generally speaking, the financial situation of the Wikimedia Foundation is quite strong. Real income exceeded the planned. This was primarily due to a very effective online fundraising campaign (yes, with that annoying banner). The fact that costs were lower than planned was due primarily to delays in hiring new employees and allocating capital costs to a new data center in Virginia. At the end of the fiscal year, the total planned capital expenditures will be spent or, possibly, slightly higher than planned.

Recently, a strategic development plan until 2015 was also published. It has the following objectives:

• increase the total number of users to 1 billion;
• increase the total number of Wikipedia articles in all languages ​​to 50 million;
• to provide high quality information by increasing the proportion of high and very high quality material by 25 percent;
• encourage readers to become participants and increase the total number of editors (making more than 5 edits per month) to 200,000;
• double the proportion of female editors to 25% and increase the number of participants from the southern hemisphere to 37%.

Previous financial reports are available on the fund's website on the corresponding page .