Wikimedia Foundation

Why Wikimedia Foundation?

It feels slightly strange to give to the Wikimedia Foundation a month after giving to Malaria Consortium. One claims to save a life with every $7.00 donated, the other spends almost 80% of its budget on personnel, legal fees, and grants. And yet, the importance of maintaining an organisation of Wikipedia's size and effect cannot be overstated.

Their slogan is incredibly powerful - protecting the human right to free and open knowledge for everyone - and does a great job of summarising what Wikipedia really is. No matter who you are or where you are, you have the same access to information as anybody else. In an era that's slowly being defined by the proliferation of false information globally, the notion that there's a universal beacon of truth out there feels very comforting - even if Wikipedia does occasionally get things wrong.

In a more personal sense, I also feel that it represents the antithesis of the modern internet. I accept that this may not be a view shared by all, but the notion of a not-for-profit site of the scale of Wikipedia seems impossible to believe. The internet has become so driven by ad revenue and userbase growth that the quality of the services have dwindled. One of the words of 2023, 'enshittification', is a summation of this. Platforms begin in the interests of their users and businesses but end as a means for the founding company to extract as much value as possible, leaving behind a shell of a once-useful service. To varying degrees, Facebook and Amazon are examples of this. 

Wikipedia, on the other hand, is as effective as ever. Without needing to appease advertisers or shareholders, it simply provides the most effective service that it can. In actuality, it looks much the same as it did ten years ago - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In my mind, this is an ethos that we should support and one that is incredibly rare in this day and age. 

Looking at the wider Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia isn't all they do), they also have Wikibooks, an attempt to build a broad library of free e-books, Wiktionary, a free online dictionary, Wikiquote, an online collection of sourced quotations from notable people and creative works, and many, many other projects. People visit Wikimedia sites 6,000 times every second, a startling indication of the value that these services provide (Wikipedia is actually in the top ten most visited sites globally).

Where did the money go? 

Whilst hosting these sites is one of the costs covered by our donation, the majority actually goes to the personnel, as mentioned above. Other areas of spend are research grants, which they're planning to increase in 2024, and also covering certain legal fees incurred by the millions of volunteer editors who comprise Wikimedia sites. You can see a breakdown here.

Amount Given

£178.55 was the initial donation made to Wikimedia Foundation. For any more information, feel free to reach out to us.