San Francisco, CA – EIN 200049703 wikimediafoundation.org
We are the people who keep knowledge free. There is an amazing community of people around the world that makes great projects like Wikipedia. We help them do that work. We take care of the technical infrastructure, the legal challenges, and the growing pains
Host free knowledge projects
The Wikimedia Foundation was established as a nonprofit in 2003 to give Wikipedia a permanent home. We now host 13 collaborative knowledge projects from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, to Wikidata, a set of structured data, and beyond. We maintain the servers, build the software, and design the technology that keep these projects running.
Deliver grants for good
We partner with Wikimedia communities around the world to provide them with the support they need to do great work. Last year we awarded over 9 million USD in grants to Wikimedia community members, affiliates and nonprofit organizations. We fund editathons, outreach efforts, events, and conferences. We help them get the word out for free knowledge.
Grow community around the world
When more people can access and contribute to free knowledge, the better that knowledge reflects the world. We are committed to helping grow and sustain a healthy community of over 220,000 people across 170 nations. From the community health initiative to ORES and our work in gender diversity, the Foundation is actively working to make our projects more inclusive.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF, or simply Wikimedia) is an American non-profit and charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California.[9] It is mostly known for participating in the Wikimedia movement. It owns the internet domain names of many movement projects and hosts sites like Wikipedia. The foundation was founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales as a way to fund Wikipedia and its sibling projects through non-profit means.[1][2]
The Wikimedia Foundation has the stated goal of developing and maintaining open content, wiki-based projects and providing the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge.[12] Another main objective of the Wikimedia Foundation is political advocacy.[13] Wikimedia claims to be "the sum of all human knowledge."
In 2001, Jimmy Wales, an Internet entrepreneur, and Larry Sanger, an online community organizer and philosophy professor, founded Wikipedia as an Internet encyclopedia to supplement Nupedia. The project was originally funded by Bomis, Jimmy Wales's for-profit business. As Wikipedia's popularity increased, revenues to fund the project stalled.[1] Since Wikipedia was depleting Bomis's resources, Wales and Sanger thought of a charity model to fund the project.[1] The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in Florida on June 20, 2003.[2][18] It applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark Wikipedia on September 14, 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. There were plans to license the use of the Wikipedia trademark for some products, such as books or DVDs.[19]
The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media, was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English mailing list in March 2003,[20] three months after Wiktionary became the second wiki-based project hosted on Wales' platform.
On December 11, 2006, the foundation's 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 statutory law. Accordingly, the by-laws were amended to remove all reference to membership rights and activities. The decision to change the bylaws was passed by the board unanimously.[21][2]
On September 25, 2007, the foundation's 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, a better talent pool, as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel than is available from St. Petersburg, Florida.[22][23][24] The move from Florida was completed by 31 January 2008 with the headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco.[25]
Lila Tretikov was appointed executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation in May 2014.[26][27] She resigned in March 2016. Former chief communications officer Katherine Maher was appointed the interim executive director, a position made permanent in June 2016.
In September 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation's application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked after objections from the government of China[30] over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan.[31]
The foundation operates eleven wikis that follow the free content model with their main goal being the dissemination of knowledge. These include, by launch date:
Name:Wikiversity Description: a collection of tutorials and courses, while also serving as a hosting point to coordinate research Website:www.wikiversity.org Launched: August 15, 2006 Alexa rank: 10,727 (Global, January 2020)[39]
Several additional projects exist to provide infrastructure or coordination of the free knowledge projects. For instance, Outreach gives guidelines for best practices on encouraging the use of Wikimedia sites. These include:
Name: Alias:Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS), formerly known as "Wikimedia Labs" Description: technical projects and infrastructure Website:wikitech.wikimedia.org Launched: June 10, 2004
Wikimedia movement affiliates are independent, but formally recognized, groups of people intended to work together to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has approved three active models for movement affiliates: chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups. Movement affiliates are intended to organize and engage in activities to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement, such as regional conferences, outreach, edit-a-thons, hackathons, public relations, public policy advocacy, GLAM engagement, and Wikimania.[41][42][43]
Recognition of a chapter and thematic organization is approved by the foundation's board. Recommendations on recognition of chapters and thematic organizations are made to the foundation's board by an Affiliations Committee, composed of Wikimedia community volunteers. The Affiliations Committee approves the recognition of individual user groups. While movement affiliates are formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, they are independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, with no legal control of nor responsibility for the Wikimedia projects.[42][43][44]
The foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004.[45] In 2010, development on additional models began. In 2012, the foundation approved, finalized, and adopted the thematic organization and user group recognition models. An additional model, movement partners, was also approved but as of 27 October 2015 has not yet been finalized or adopted.[41][43][46]
Each year, an international conference called Wikimania brings the people together who are involved in the Wikimedia organizations and projects. The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2005. Nowadays, Wikimania is organized by a committee supported usually by the national chapter, in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires,[47]Cambridge,[48]Haifa,[49]Hong Kong,[50] and London.[51] In 2015, Wikimania took place in Mexico City,[52] in 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy,[53] 2017 in Montreal, 2018 in Cape Town, and 2019 in Stockholm.
In response to the growing size and popularity of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a Strategic Plan to improve and sustain the Wikimedia movement. The plan was announced in July 2009, followed by a process of interviews and surveys with people from across the Wikimedia movement, including board of trustees, members of staff and volunteer editors.[54] The ongoing plan was intended to be the basis of a five-year plan to further outreach, improve content quality and quality control, and optimising operational areas such as finance and infrastructure.[55]
Wikipedia Usability Initiative
In December 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a restricted donation grant of US$890,000 from the Stanton Foundation,[56] to improve Wikipedia's accessibility.[57] Later named the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, the grant was used by the Wikimedia Foundation to appoint project-specific staff to the technology department.[58]
A series of surveys were conducted throughout 2009. This began with a qualitative environment survey on MediaWiki extensions, followed by a Qualitative Statistical Survey focusing on the volume of edits, the number of new users, and related statistics. In March 2009, a usability and experience study was carried out on new and non-editors of the English Wikipedia. The aim was to discover what obstacles participants encountered while editing Wikipedia, ranging from small changes to more complicated syntax such as templates. The study recruited 2500 people for in-person laboratory testing via the Wikipedia website, which was filtered down to ten participants. The results were collated and used by the technology team to improve Wikipedia's usability.[59] The Usability and Experience Study was followed up by the Usability, Experience and Progress Study in September 2009. This study recruited different new and non-editors for in-person trials on a new Wikipedia skin.[60]
The initiative ultimately culminated in a new Wikipedia skin named Vector, constructed based on the results of the usability studies. This was introduced by default in stages, beginning in May 2010.[61]
Public Policy Initiative
In May 2010, the Wikimedia Foundation announced the Public Policy Initiative, following a US$1.2 million donation by the Stanton Foundation. The initiative was set up to improve articles relating to public policy issues.[62] As part of the initiative, Wikipedia collaborated with ten universities to help students and professors create and maintain articles relating to public policy.[63] Volunteer editors of Wikipedia, known as "ambassadors", provided assistance to students and professors. This was either done on campus sites or online.[64]
By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia; citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer hurricanes".[71][72] In years prior, the hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress.[67]
In October 2013, Wikimedia Foundation started looking for a second facility that would be used side by side with the main facility in Ashburn, citing reasons of redundancy (e.g. emergency fallback) and to prepare for simultaneous multi-datacentre service.[73][74] This follows the year in which a fiber cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012.[75][76]
Apart from the second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014,[77][78] the number of servers needed to run the infrastructure in a single facility has been mostly stable since 2009. As of November 2015, the main facility in Ashburn hosts 520 servers in total, which includes servers for newer services besides Wikimedia project wikis, such as Cloud Services (Toolforge), and various services for metrics, monitoring, and other system administration.[79]
In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation deployed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore, the first of its kind in Asia.[80]
Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker.
Several MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005, an Apache Lucene extension[83][84] was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene for searching. Currently Lucene Search 2.1,[85] which is written in Java and based on Lucene library 2.3,[86] is used. The Wikimedia Foundation also uses CiviCRM[87] and WordPress.[88]
The foundation published official Wikipedia mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and in March 2015, the apps were updated to include mobile user-friendly features.[89]
Finances
In general
Financial development of the Wikimedia Foundation (in US$), 2003–2018 Black: Net assets Green: Revenue Red: Expenses
The Wikimedia Foundation relies on public contributions and grants to fund its mission.[90] It is exempt from federal income tax[90][91] and from state income tax.[90][92] It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.[90]
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 and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, has been a source of revenue for several years,[90] but is no longer open to new customers.[93]DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge.[94]
In July 2014, the foundation announced it would be accepting Bitcoin donations via digital currency exchange Coinbase, which waives its processing fees for non-profit organizations.[95]
Since the end of fiscal year ended 2004, the foundation's net assets have grown from US$57,000[96] to US$53.5 million at the end of fiscal year ended June 30, 2014.[97] Under the leadership of Sue Gardner, who joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2007, the foundation's staff levels, number of donors and revenue have seen very significant growth.[98]
Interview with Garfield Byrd, Chief of Finance and Administration at the Wikimedia Foundation. Recorded October 7, 2011
In 2007, 2008, and 2009, Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of three out of four possible stars,[99] increasing to four stars in 2010.[100] As of November 2019, the rating was four stars (overall score 98.14 out of 100), based on data from FY2018.[101]
Expenses
The Wikimedia Foundation expenses mainly concern salaries, wages and other professional operating and services.[102]
Grants
Wikimedia Foundation and chapters finance meeting 2012, Paris
In 2009, the foundation received four grants – the first grant was a US$890,000Stanton Foundation grant which was aimed to help study and simplify user interface for first-time authors of Wikipedia.[108] The second was a US$300,000Ford Foundation grant, given in July 2009, for Wikimedia Commons that aimed to improve the interfaces and workflows for multimedia uploading on Wikimedia websites.[109] In August 2009, the foundation received a US$500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.[110] Lastly, in August 2009, the Omidyar Network committed up to US$2 million over two years to Wikimedia.[111]
In 2010, Google donated US$2 million to the foundation.[112] The Stanton Foundation granted $1.2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program for what would later become the Wikipedia Education Program (and the spinoff Wiki Education Foundation).[113][114][115] Also in 2010, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation pledged a US$800,000 grant and all was funded during 2011.[citation needed]
In March 2011, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation authorized another US$3 million grant to continue to develop and maintain the foundation's mission. The grant was to be funded over three years with the first US$1 million funded in July 2011 and the remaining US$2 million was scheduled to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. As a major donor, Doron Weber from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.[116] In August 2011, the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a US$3.6 million grant of which US$1.8 million was funded and the remainder was due to be funded in September 2012. As of 2011, this was the largest grant received by the Wikimedia Foundation to-date.[117] In November 2011, the foundation received a US$500,000 donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation.[118][119]
In 2012, the foundation was awarded a grant of US$1.25 million from the historians Lisbet Rausing[118] and Peter Baldwin through Charities Aid Foundation, scheduled to be funded in five equal installments. The first installment of US$250,000 was received in April 2012 and the remaining were to be funded in December 2012 through 2015. In 2014, the foundation received the largest single gift in its history, a $5 million unrestricted donation from an anonymous donor supporting $1 million worth of expenses annually for the next five years.[120] In March 2012, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a foundation established by Intel co-founder and his wife, awarded a US$449,636 grant to develop Wikidata.[121]
In 2017, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded another US$3 million grant for a three-year period.[116]
The following have donated a total of US$500,000 or more, each (2008–2019):
Total (US$000s)
Donor
Years
9,000
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
2008–2013
2017–2019
5,952
Stanton Foundation
2009–2012
5,000
(anonymous)
2014–2018
2,000
Omidyar Network
2009–2010
2,000
Google
2010
1,527
Rausing, Baldwin via Arcadia, Charities Aid
2008
2012–2015
1,300
Hewlett
2009–2010
500
Sergey Brin and wife
2010
500
Monarch Foundation
2014–2015
Wikimedia Endowment
In January 2016, the foundation announced the creation of an endowment to ensure the continuity of the project in the future. The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a collective action fund at the Tides Foundation and its goal is to raise US$100 million in the next 10 years.[127]Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving US$1 million to the endowment.[128]
The Foundation provided irrevocable grants of $5 million on June 29, 2016, and $5 million on June 27, 2017, to the Tides Foundation for the purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment.[129] Another $5 million was given in the fiscal year 2017–2018. The amounts were recorded as part of the expense for awards and grants of the foundation.[6]
In 2018, Amazon.com and Facebook gave US$1 million each and George Soros donated $2 million to the endowment.[130][131][132] In January 2019, Google donated $2 million to the endowment.[133] In 2019, Peter Baldwin and his wife, Lisbet Rausing, donated $3.5 million, bringing their total Endowment giving to $8.5 million; an initial $5 million was given in 2017.[7] In 2019, Craig Newmark Philanthropies donated an additional $2.5 million to the Endowment.[134] In October 2019 and in September 2020, Amazon donated $1 million to the Endowment.[135][136]
Financial summary
Wikimedia financial data through June 2019 (fiscal years are July 1 – June 30)
The foundation's board of trustees has ultimate authority in all the businesses and affairs of the foundation. Since 2008 it has been composed of ten members:
three who are selected by the community encompassed by all the different Wikimedia projects;
two who are selected by Wikimedia affiliates (chapters, thematic organizations and user groups);
Three permanent entities support the board on its mission and responsibilities: an executive director, who leads and oversees the operational arm of the foundation; an advisory board composed of individuals selected by the board itself that advise the board on different matters; and standing committees to which the board delegates certain matters while retaining ultimate authority. The board has also at times created other entities to support itself, such as executive secretaries and ad hoc committees established for specific tasks.
The advisory board, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, 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.[158]
Appointed members for the period from June 16, 2017, to June 30, 2018, were:[159][needs update?]
Group photo of Wikimedia Foundation staff in January 2019
First appointments
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 seven more official appointments.[160]
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.[161] Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program.
Employees
The foundation's functions were, for the first few years, executed almost entirely by volunteers. In 2005, it had only two employees, Danny Wool, a coordinator, and Brion Vibber, a software manager.
As of October 4, 2006, the foundation had five paid employees:[162] two programmers, an administrative assistant, a coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim executive director,[163] 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, who served as general counsel and legal coordinator from July 2007[164] until 2010.
In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez joined as head of communications.[165] Doran began working as a part-time bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a temporary agency. Doran, found to have had a long criminal record,[166] left the foundation in July 2007, and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor (later CEO). Doran's departure from the organization was cited by Florence Devouard as one of the reasons the foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.[167]
Exterior view of the previous Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters at New Montgomery St in 2014.
Danny Wool, officially the grant coordinator but also largely involved in fundraising and business development, resigned in March 2007. He accused Wales of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes, and said that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.[168] In February 2007, the foundation added a new position, chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard,[169] 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. Oleta McHenry was brought in as accountant in May 2007, through a temporary placement agency and made the official full-time accountant in August 2007. In January 2008, the foundation appointed Veronique Kessler as the new chief financial and operating officer, Kul Wadhwa as head of business development, and Jay Walsh as head of communications.
As of December 19, 2019, the foundation had more than 350 employees and contractors.[8]
Many disputes have resulted in litigation[170][171][172][173] while others have not.[174] Attorney Matt Zimmerman stated, "Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created encyclopedia content."[175]
In December 2011, the foundation hired Washington, D.C., lobbyist Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC to lobby the United States Congress with regard to "Civil Rights/Civil Liberties" and "Copyright/Patent/Trademark."[176] At the time of the hire the Foundation was concerned specifically about a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act.[177]
In October 2013, a German Court ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation can be held liable for content added to Wikipedia – however, this applies only when there has been a specific complaint; otherwise, the Wikimedia Foundation does not check any of the content published on Wikipedia and has no duty to do so.[178]
In June 2014, a copyright infringement lawsuit was filed by Bildkonst Upphovsrätt i Sverige against Wikimedia Sweden.[179]
On June 20, 2014, a defamation lawsuit (Law Division civil case No. L-1400-14) involving Wikipedia editors was filed with the Mercer County Superior Court in New Jersey seeking, inter alia, compensatory and punitive damages.[180][181]
In February 2016, Lila Tretikov announced her resignation as executive director, as a result of the WMF's controversial Knowledge Engine project and disagreements with the staff.[188][189]
Controversies
Obtrusive fundraising
During the 2015 fundraising campaign, some members of the community voiced their concerns about the fundraising banners. They argued that they were obtrusive for users and that they could be deceiving potential donors by giving the perception that Wikipedia had immediate financial issues, which was not the case. The Wikimedia Foundation vowed to improve wording on further fundraising campaigns to avoid these issues.[190]
In June 2015, James Heilman was elected by the community to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.[191] In December 2015, the Board removed Heilman from his position as a Trustee,[192][193] a decision that generated substantial controversy amongst members of the Wikipedia community.[153] A statement released by the board declared the lack of confidence of his fellow trustees in him as the reasons for his ouster. Heilman later stated that he "was given the option of resigning [by the Board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such a move as letting down those who elected me."[194] He subsequently pointed out that while on the Board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's controversial Knowledge Engine project and its financing,[195] and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal.[196]
The volunteer community re-elected him to the Wikimedia Foundation board in 2017.[155]
Knowledge Engine was a search engine project initiated in 2015 by the WMF to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information on the Internet.[197] The goal of the KE was to be less reliant on traditional search engines and it was funded with a US$250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation.[198] The project was perceived as a scandal, mainly because it was conceived in secrecy, which was perceived as a conflict with the Wikimedia community's transparency. In fact, most of the information available to the community was received through leaked documents published by The Signpost in 2016.[199][197]
Following this controversy, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov resigned.[200]
Excessive spending
Wikimedia Foundation's expenses evolution by rubrics in USD.
Wales was confronted with allegations that the WMF had "a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works".[155] Wales acknowledged in 2014 that he had "been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch show-stopping bugs".[155]
In February 2017, an op-ed published by The Signpost, English Wikipedia online newspaper, titled Wikipedia has Cancer[201] produced a heated debate both in the Wikipedian community and the wider public. The author criticized the Wikimedia Foundation for its ever-increasing annual spending which, he argued, could put the project at financial risk should an unexpected event happen. The author proposed to put a cap on spending, build up its existing endowment, and restructure the endowment so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad. Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director, Katherine Maher responded by pointing out that such an endowment was already created in 2016, confusing creating an endowment with building up an existing endowment.[202]
References
^ abcdNeate, Rupert (October 7, 2008). "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales goes bananas". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on November 10, 2008. Retrieved October 25, 2009. The encyclopedia's huge fan base became such a drain on Bomis's resources that Mr Wales, and co-founder Larry Sanger, thought of a radical new funding model – charity.
^Jackson, Jasper (February 12, 2017). "'We always look for reliability': why Wikipedia's editors cut out the Daily Mail". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 13, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2017. Another core job for the foundation – and Maher – is political advocacy. While copyright and press freedom are important issues for Wikipedia, there is one area even more fundamental to its operation - the rules that protect web firms from full liability for what their users post.
^Nair, Vipin (December 5, 2005). "Growing on volunteer power". Business Line. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved December 26, 2008.
^ abVarious. "Wikimedia movement affiliates". meta.wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
^Various. "Affiliations Committee". meta.wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on October 4, 2015. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
^Various. "Wikimedia chapters". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on November 4, 2015. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
^Garland, William H.; Garland, Samuel (April 1931). "Letters of Wm. H. Garland and Samuel M. Garland, Students at William and Mary College, 1823-1824". The William and Mary Quarterly. 11 (2): 136. doi:10.2307/1921005. ISSN0043-5597. JSTOR1921005.
^Bizer, C (September 2009). "Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web". 7 (3): 154–165. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ ab"Bylaws - Wikimedia Foundation". Wikimedia Foundation. July 10, 2019. Retrieved December 5, 2020. (F) Community Founder Trustee Position. The Board may appoint Jimmy Wales as Community Founder Trustee for a three-year term. The Board may reappoint Wales as Community Founder Trustee for successive three-year terms (without a term limit). In the event that Wales is not appointed as Community Founder Trustee, the position will remain vacant, and the Board shall not fill the vacancy.
^Jimmy Wales (October 4, 2006). Charlie Rose (46:22) (TV-Series). Google Video: Charlie Rose. Archived from the original(internet video) on October 14, 2006. Retrieved December 8, 2006.
^"Resolution:James Heilman Removal". Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. December 28, 2015. Archived from the original on February 15, 2018. Retrieved December 29, 2015.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104-5516 | Tax-exempt since March 2005
EIN: 20-0049703
Classification (NTEE) Adult, Continuing Education (Educational Institutions and Related Activities)
Nonprofit Tax Code Designation: 501(c)(3) Defined as: Organizations for any of the following purposes: religious, educational, charitable, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition (as long as it doesn’t provide athletic facilities or equipment), or the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.
Donations to this organization are tax deductible.