Inside Wikimedia video
The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable organization
headquartered in San Francisco
, California
, United States, and organized under the laws of the
state of Florida
, where it
was initially based. It operates several online
collaborative
wiki projects including
Wikipedia,
Wiktionary,
Wikiquote,
Wikibooks (including
Wikijunior),
Wikisource,
Wikimedia Commons,
Wikispecies,
Wikinews,
Wikiversity,
Wikimedia Incubator and . Its
flagship project, the
English-language
Wikipedia, ranks among the top ten most-visited websites
worldwide.
The creation of the foundation was officially announced on June 20,
2003 by
Wikipedia co-founder
Jimmy Wales, who had been operating Wikipedia
under the aegis of his company
Bomis.
Goals
The Wikimedia Foundation falls under section
501 of the US
Internal Revenue Code as a
public charity. Its
National Taxonomy of Exempt
Entities (NTEE) code is B60 (
Adult,
Continuing Education).The foundation's
by-laws declare a statement of purpose of collecting and developing
educational content and to disseminate it effectively and
globally.
The Wikimedia
Foundation's
stated goal is to develop and maintain
open
content,
wiki-based projects and to provide
the full contents of those projects to the public
free of charge.This is possible thanks to its
Terms of Use (updated and approved
on June 2009, to adopt
CC-BY-SA
license).
History and growth
The Wikimedia Foundation was created from Wikipedia and Nupedia on
June 20, 2003.
Jimmy Wales: "
Announcing Wikimedia Foundation", June 20,
2003, It applied to the
United States Patent
and Trademark Office to
trademark
Wikipedia on September 17, 2004. The mark was granted
registration status on January 10, 2006.
Trademark protection
was accorded by Japan
on December
16, 2004, and in the European Union
on January 20, 2005. Technically a
service mark, the scope of the mark is for:
"Provision of
information in the field
of general encyclopedic knowledge via the
Internet." There are plans to license the use of
the Wikipedia trademark for some products, such as books or
DVDs.
The name "Wikimedia" was
coined by
Sheldon Rampton in a post to the
English Wikipedia's mailing list in March 2003.
With the foundation's announcement, Wales also transferred
ownership of all Wikipedia, Wiktionary and
Nupedia domain names to
Wikimedia along with the copyrights for all materials related to
these projects that were created by
Bomis
employees or Wales himself. The computer equipment used to run all
the Wikimedia projects was also donated by Wales to the foundation,
which also acquired the
domain names
"wikimedia.org" and "wikimediafoundation.org".
In April 2005, the US
Internal
Revenue Service approved (by letter) the foundation as an
educational foundation in the category "
Adult,
Continuing Education", meaning all
contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation are
tax deductible for U.S. federal income tax
purposes.
On December 11, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation board noted that the
corporation could not become the membership organization initially
planned but never implemented due to an inability to meet the
registration requirements of Florida Statute. Accordingly, the
bylaws were amended to remove all reference to membership rights
and activities. The decision to change the bylaws was passed by the
board unanimously.
On
September 25, 2007, the Wikimedia Foundation board gave notice that
the operations would be moving to the San Francisco
Bay Area
. Major considerations cited for choosing San
Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential
partners as well as cheaper and more convenient international
travel than is available from St. Petersburg.
Board of Trustees
- In January 2004, Jimmy Wales
appointed his business partners Tim Shell
and Michael Davis to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. In June
2004, an election was held for two user representative board
members. Following one month of campaigning and two weeks of online
voting, Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard were elected to
join the board. In late 2004, Wales and Beesley launched a startup
company, Wikia, affiliated with neither
Wikimedia nor Bomis, except for their presence as
principals/trustees. In July 2005, Beesley and Nibart-Devouard were
re-elected to the board.
- On July 1, 2006, Beesley resigned from the board effective upon
election of her successor, expressing concern about "certain events
and tendencies that have arisen within the organization since the
start of this year," but stating her intent to continue to
participate in the Wikimedia projects, and in the formation of an
Australian chapter. A special election was held in September to
finish Beesley's term, ending with the mid-2007 election. The
election was won by Erik
Möller.
- In October 2006, Nibart-Devouard replaced Wales as chair of the
Foundation. On December 8, 2006, the board expanded to seven people
with the appointments of Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen. Effective December 15,
2006, Jan-Bart de Vreede was
appointed to replace Shell.
- In the June 2007 election, Möller and Walsh were reelected; van
Dillen, who ran for re-election, was narrowly edged by Frieda
Brioschi.
- Davis left the board in November 2007. Nibart-Devouard's
elected term expires in June 2008. The appointed terms for Wales
and de Vreede expired in December 2008. Brioschi's and Walsh's
elected terms expired in June 2009.
- In December 2007, Möller resigned from the Board of Trustees,
and was hired as the foundation's deputy director by the executive
director.
- In February 2008, Florence Devouard announced the addition of
two new board members: Michael Snow, an American lawyer and chair
of the Communication Committee; and Domas Mituzas, a Lithuanian
computer software engineer, MySQL employee, and longtime member of
the core tech team.
- In April 2008, the board announced a restructuring of its
membership, increasing the number of board positions to 10 overall,
as follows:
- Three community-elected seats
- Two seats to be selected by the chapters
- One board-appointed 'community founder' seat, to be occupied by
Jimmy Wales
- Four board-appointed 'specific expertise' seats
- In the June 2008 board election, Ting Chen was elected for a
one-year term, then in September Frieda Brioschi resigned to be
elected at the board of Wikimedia
Italia.
- In August 2009 board election, Ting Chen (reelected), Kat Walsh
and Samuel Klein are elected. Their positions will be effective
until July 2011
Volunteer committees and positions
In 2004, the foundation appointed Tim Starling as developer liaison
to help improve the
MediaWiki software,
Daniel Mayer as
chief financial
officer (
finance,
budgeting and coordination of fund drives), and
Erik Möller as content partnership
coordinator.
In May 2005, the foundation announced the appointment of seven
people to official positions:
- Brion Vibber as chief technical officer (Vibber was also an
employee of the Foundation, with other duties)
- Domas Mituzas as hardware officer
- Jens Frank as developer liaison
- Möller as chief research officer
- Danny Wool as grants coordinator
- Elisabeth Bauer as press officer
- Jean-Baptiste Soufron as
lead legal coordinator
Möller resigned in August 2005, due to differences with the board,
and was replaced by James Forrester. In February 2007, Forrester
resigned, and the board appointed Gregory Maxwell to the position,
renamed "chief research coordinator".
In January 2006, the foundation created several committees,
including the Communication Committee, in an attempt to further
organize activities essentially handled by volunteers at that time.
Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD
program.
Employees
Organization chart as of January
2008
The functions of the Wikimedia Foundation were, for the first few
years, executed almost entirely by volunteers. In 2005, the
foundation had only two employees, Danny Wool, a coordinator, and
Brion Vibber, a software manager. Though the number of employees
has grown, the foundation's staff is still very small, and the bulk
of foundation work continues to be done by volunteers.
As of October 4, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation had five paid
employees: two programmers, an administrative assistant, a
coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim
executive director, Brad
Patrick, previously the foundation's
general counsel. Patrick ceased his activity
as interim director in January 2007, and then resigned from his
position as legal counsel, effective April 1, 2007. He was replaced
by
Mike Godwin as general counsel and
legal coordinator in July 2007. Three further technical contractors
were also appointed in December 2006: part-time hardware manager
Kyle Anderson in Tampa, full-time MediaWiki software developer Tim
Starling, and part-time networking coordinator Mark Bergsma.
In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named
chief operating officer and Sandy
Ordonez came on board as
head
of communications. Doran had begun working as a part-time
bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a
temporary agency. Doran later left the
foundation in July 2007, and
Sue Gardner
was hired as consultant and special advisor (later CEO). Some
months after Doran's departure, it was determined that she was a
convicted
felon, with a
DUI
arrest during her tenure at the foundation and a substantial
criminal history, including shooting her boyfriend and complicity
in credit card forgery. Her departure from the organization was
cited as one of the reasons the foundation took about seven months
to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.
Danny Wool, officially the grant coordinator but also largely
involved in fundraising and business development, resigned in March
2007. In February 2007, the foundation added a new position,
chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard, who had been
occupying the position as a volunteer since August 2005. Cary Bass
was hired in March 2007 in the position of
volunteer coordinator. In May
2007, Vishal Patel was hired to assist in business development.
Oleta McHenry was brought in as accountant in May, 2007, through a
temporary placement agency and made the official fulltime
accountant in August, 2007. In
January 2008, the
foundation appointed three new staff: Veronique Kessler as the new
chief financial and operating officer,
Kul Wadhwa to replace Vishal Patel as head
of business development, and
Jay
Walsh as
head of
communications.
In June 2008, the foundation announced two staff additions in
fundraising: Rebecca Handler as major gifts officer and Rand
Montoya as head of community giving. Soon afterward, Sara Crouse
was hired as head of partnerships and foundation relations. In fall
2008, the foundation hired three software developers: Tomasz Finc,
Ariel Glenn, and Trevor Parscal.
Board members
Board of Trustees
Board members at Wikimania 2009 in
Buenos Aires
These are the members of the Board of
Trustees and the expiry of their terms, :
- Michael Snow, chair
(July 2010)
- Jan-Bart de Vreede, vice-chair (December 2009)
- Kat Walsh, executive secretary (July 2011)
- Stuart West, treasurer (December 2009)
- Jimmy Wales, chairman emeritus
(December 2009)
- Arne Klempert (July 2010)
- Ting Chen (July 2011)
- Samuel Klein (July 2011)
- Matt Halprin (December 2009)
Advisory Board
The
Advisory Board is an
international network of experts who have agreed to give the
foundation meaningful help on a regular basis in many different
areas, including law, organizational development, technology,
policy, and outreach. , the members are:
Projects, initiatives and chapters
Projects
The Wikimedia projects logo
family
In addition to the multilingual general
encyclopedia Wikipedia, the foundation manages a
multi-language
dictionary and
thesaurus named
Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of
quotations named
Wikiquote, a repository of source texts in
any language named
Wikisource,
and a collection of
e-book texts for students
(such as
textbooks and annotated
public domain books) named
Wikibooks.
Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that
specializes in books for children.The launch dates shown below are
when official domains were established for the projects and/or beta
versions were launched; preliminary test versions at other domains
are not considered.
| Name |
URL |
Launching date |
Description |
| Wikipedia |
www.wikipedia.org |
2001-01-15 |
Encyclopedia containing more than 13 million articles in 266
languages. |
|
meta.wikimedia.org |
2001-11-09 |
Wiki devoted to the coordination of the Wikimedia
projects. |
| Wiktionary |
www.wiktionary.org |
2002-12-12 |
Dictionary cataloging meanings, synonyms, etymologies and
translations. |
| Wikibooks |
www.wikibooks.org |
2003-07-10 |
Collection of free educational textbooks and learning
materials. |
| Wikiquote |
www.wikiquote.org |
2003-07-10 |
Collection of quotations structured in numerous ways. |
| Wikisource |
www.wikisource.org |
2003-11-24 |
Project to provide and translate free source documents, such as
public domain texts. |
| Wikimedia Commons |
commons.wikimedia.org |
2004-09-07 |
Repository of images,
sounds, videos and general media,
containing over 5,000,000 files. |
| Wikimedia
Incubator |
incubator.wikimedia.org |
2006-06-02 |
Used to test possible new languages for existing projects. |
| Wikispecies |
species.wikimedia.org |
2004-09-13 |
Directory of species data on animalia, plantae, fungi, bacteria, archaea, protista and all
other forms of life. |
| Wikinews |
www.wikinews.org |
2004-12-03 |
News source containing original reporting
by citizen journalists from many countries. |
| Wikiversity |
www.wikiversity.org |
2006-08-15 |
Educational and research materials and activities. |
| Wikimedia Outreach |
outreach.wikimedia.org |
2009-10 |
Promotion of Wikimedia projects |
| Wikimedia Strategic planning |
strategy.wikimedia.org |
summer 2009 |
Strategy planning work for all Wikimedia projects |
| Wikipedia Usability Initiative |
usability.wikimedia.org |
2008 |
Usability team wiki |
| Wikimania |
wikimania.wikimedia.org |
|
Wikimania conference websites |
| Wikipedia Test Wiki |
test.wikipedia.org |
|
Test wiki that runs a recent version of MediaWiki |
| Wikimedia Surveys |
survey.wikimedia.org |
|
Survey aggregation website |
Wikimania
Wikimedia organizes each year Wikimania, a conference for users of
the Wikimedia Foundation projects.
It was first organized in Frankfurt
(Germany), 2005.
Local chapters
World map showing countries that have
local chapters in blue.
Wikimedia projects have an international scope. To continue this
success on an organizational level, Wikimedia is building an
international network of associated organizations.
Local chapters are
self-dependent organizations that share the goals of the Wikimedia
Foundation and support them within a specified geographical region.
They support the foundation, the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia
projects in different ways — by collecting donations,
organizing local events and projects and spreading the word of
Wikimedia, free content and Wiki culture. They also provide the
community and potential partners with a point of contact capable of
fulfilling specific local needs.
Local chapters are self-dependent associations with no legal
control of nor responsibility for the websites of the Wikimedia
Foundation and vice versa.
Finances
The Wikimedia Foundation relies on public contributions and grants
to fund its mission. It is exempt from federal income tax and from
state income tax. It is not a private foundation, and contributions
to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.The
continued technical and economic growth of each of the Wikimedia
projects is dependent mostly on donations but the Wikimedia
Foundation also increases its revenue by alternative means of
funding such as
grants, sponsorship,
services (
datafeed) and brand merchandising.
At the beginning of 2006, the foundation's
net
assets were $270,000. During the year, the organization
received support and revenue totaling $1,510,000, with concurrent
expenses of $790,000.
Net assets increased
by $720,000 to a total of over one million dollars. In 2007, the
foundation continued to expand, ending the year with net assets of
$1,700,000. Both income and expenses nearly doubled in 2007. In
March 2008 the foundation announced its largest donation to date: a
three-year, $3 million grant from the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
In August 2009, the
Omidyar Network
issued a potential $2 million in "grant" funding to Wikimedia. At
the same time, an Omidyar partner, Matt Halprin, was nominated to
the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The Omidyar Network
also invested part of $4 million into
Wikia,
Inc., which was co-founded by Wikimedia Foundation chairman
emeritus, Jimmy Wales.
Grants
In 2009, the foundation received three grants. The first grant was
a $890,000
Stanton Foundation
grant and aimed to help study and simplify user interface for
first-time authors of Wikipedia. The second was a $300,000
Ford Foundation Grant for
Wikimedia Commons that aimed to improve
the interfaces and workflows for multimedia uploading on Wikimedia
websites. In August 2009, the foundation received a $500,000 grant
from
Hewlett Foundation.
References
- Wikimedia Foundation
- January 2008 Wikimedia Organization employee
descriptions
- Mailing list post by the Chair of the Wikimedia
Foundation's Board of Trustees announcing the appointment.
- See also Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of the
Florida Statutes
- See also Chapter 220.13 of the Florida Statutes
- Finance report 2007
- Press release, Omidyar Network Commits $2
Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation, August 25, 2009.
- CNET News, Margaret Kane, March 28, 2006.
- http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/StantonGrantQA
-
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/02/ford-foundation-awards-300k-grant-for-wikimedia-commons/
-
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Hewlett_Foundation_grant_August_2009
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