s, sponsorship, services and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia
OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, was a source of revenue for a number of years.
DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge. An expanded version of data feeds and content services was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise, an LLC subsidiary of the foundation. In July 2014, the foundation announced it would accept
Bitcoin donations. In 2021,
cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0.08% of all donations and on May 1, 2022, the foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a
Wikimedia community vote. The foundation's net assets grew from an initial $57,000 at the end of its first fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004, to $53.5 million in mid-2014 and $231 million (plus a $100 million endowment) by the end of June 2021; that year, the foundation also announced plans to launch Wikimedia Enterprise, to let large organizations pay by volume for high-volume access to otherwise rate-limited APIs. In 2020, the foundation donated $4.5 million to
Tides Advocacy to create a "Knowledge Equity Fund", to provide grants to organizations whose work would not otherwise be covered by Wikimedia grants but addresses racial inequities in accessing and contributing to free knowledge resources.
Wikimedia Endowment In January 2016, the foundation announced the creation of an
endowment to safeguard its future. The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the
Tides Foundation, with a stated goal to raise $100 million in the next 10 years.
Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving $1 million.
Peter Baldwin and
Lisbet Rausing, of
Arcadia Fund, donated $5 million in 2017. In 2019, donations included $2 million from Google, $3.5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing, $2.5 million more from Newmark, and another $1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020. the advisory board consists of
Jimmy Wales,
Peter Baldwin, former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees
Patricio Lorente and
Phoebe Ayers, former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor
Doron Weber of the
Sloan Foundation, investor
Annette Campbell-White, venture capitalist Michael Kim, portfolio manager Alexander M. Farman-Farmaian, and strategist Lisa Lewin. These amounts have been recorded as part of the foundation's "awards and grants" expenses. The Endowment pays the foundation for expenses the foundation incurs on behalf of the Endowment, mostly salaries of staff; in 2022–2023, this payment was 1.8 million. In September 2021, the foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $100 million fundraising goal in June 2021, five years ahead of its initial target. In January 2024, the endowment was reported to have a value of $140 million.
Expenses (2004–2020) A plurality of Wikimedia Foundation expenses are salaries and wages, followed by community and affiliate grants, contributions to the endowment, and other professional operating expenses and services.
Grants The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history. In 2008, the foundation received a $40,000 grant from the
Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Wikipedia. It also received a $262,000 grant from the
Stanton Foundation to purchase
hardware, a $500,000 unrestricted grant from
Vinod and
Neeru Khosla, who later that year joined the foundation advisory board, and $177,376 from the historians
Lisbet Rausing and
Peter Baldwin (
Arcadia Fund), among others. In 2009, the foundation received four grants. The first was a $890,000 Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first-time authors of Wikipedia. The second was a $300,000
Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for
Wikimedia Commons, to improve the interface for uploading multimedia files. In August 2009, the foundation received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation. Also in August 2009, the
Omidyar Network committed up to $2 million over two years to Wikimedia. In 2010,
Google donated $2 million and the Stanton Foundation granted $1.2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program for what later became the Wikipedia Education Program (and the spin-off
Wiki Education Foundation). In March 2011, the Sloan Foundation authorized another $3 million grant, to be funded over three years, with the first $1 million to come in July 2011 and the remaining $2 million to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. As a donor,
Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In August 2011, the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a $3.6 million grant of which $1.8 million was funded and the remainder was to come in September 2012. As of 2011, this was the largest grant the Wikimedia Foundation had ever received. In November 2011, the foundation received a $500,000 donation from the
Brin Wojcicki Foundation. In 2012, the foundation was awarded a grant of $1.25 million from
Lisbet Rausing In March 2012, The
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, established by the
Intel co-founder and his wife, awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a $449,636 grant to develop
Wikidata. This was part of a larger grant, much of which went to Wikimedia Germany, which took on ownership of the development effort. Between 2014 and 2015, the foundation received $500,000 from the Monarch Fund, $100,000 from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the
Stavros Niarchos Foundation to support the
Wikipedia Zero initiative. In 2015, a grant agreement was reached with the
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a search engine called the "
Knowledge Engine", a project that
proved controversial. In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded another $3 million grant for a three-year period, The following have donated $500,000 or more each (2008–2019, not including gifts to the Wikimedia Endowment): == Board of trustees ==