
Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load - karimf
https://www.khanacademy.org/donate
======
Aachen
Where your money goes is detailed here:
[https://khanacademyannualreport.org/financial-
information/](https://khanacademyannualreport.org/financial-information/) (see
PDF downloads).

The most recent data is from 2018, when they had an income of about 43M of
which about 3.4M goes to the top 10 paid employees and the top two get 0.7M
and 0.8M. The total salary budget is 35M, 25M of which are for "program
services" (I guess creating content, developing the platform, etc.). This
looks more reasonable compared to an organisation like Mozilla. Other things
that jump out are half a million in legal fees and 1.8M for fundraising. In
total, 43M out of 49M expenses in 2018 went to "program services", and they
were running at a slight deficit. Looks pretty OK to me.

Assuming "information technology" means hosting, that's about 5M. Doing that
times 2.5 would indeed create quite a problem, and that's assuming they don't
need more people working on it to keep up with the new crowd.

~~~
malux85
I wonder what the technology breakdown costs are? Is there anyone from KA
engineering here who can satisfy our curiosity?

Most of it would be outgoing bandwidth I’d think... maybe storage as well?

~~~
dangoor
Our videos are hosted on YouTube, which definitely reduces our outgoing
bandwidth cost.

Compute is actually a big part of our costs, because we do a lot of processing
for things like tracking learner progress and connecting students with their
classroom assignments. This kind of thing grows linearly with usage.

We're working to move to Go, which will make a _big_ difference in this part
of our bill.
[http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm](http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm)

~~~
phonon
Did you try switching your interpreter to PyPy?

~~~
dangoor
That's not possible in that particular hosting environment. I believe some
people have done experiments with PyPy, but the difference in performance is
nothing like that we see with Go.

~~~
phonon
Oh, because you use App Engine Standard? Did you reconsider being locked into
App Engine? What about App Engine Flexible?
[https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/custom-
runt...](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/custom-runtimes)

PyPy might give you a 2-4x speedup, and if it wasn't for App Engine Standard,
might be as easy as dropping it in instead of CPython, while Go is a total
rewrite. Seems strange you wouldn't at least do a deeper dive on PyPy...

~~~
dangoor
The fundamental reason that we started on this track is the need to get off of
Python 2, which has reached EOL and from which the community is moving away.
Because of APIs we're using and such, it's not easy to switch to Python 3.
Because of API changes in GAE, moving to PyPy on Flex is also still difficult
and doesn't solve the problem of still being on Python 2.

Performance is one of several important reasons for the move to Go, and not
the top reason.

------
arzel
Ahh.. Khan Academy.. the usefulness this site provided throughout my middle
and high school education. Quite frankly, it literally saved my ass. I've gone
ahead and donated $1K.

~~~
malux85
Couldn't do 1k but I can do 200 right now, anything for these guys, they are
doing amazing work, everyone give what you can!

~~~
dangoor
Thanks! That's a generous donation

------
elric
If anyone from Khan Academy is reading this: I tried to donate and my
transaction was flagged as "suspicious", now my card is blocked. Probably
because their PSP doesn't seem to implement 3DSecure. What's grating is that
after I tried to donate I had to solve a bunch of reCaptchas before it showed
me the failure status.

~~~
avian
Very likely Khan Academy can't help. Also your bank probably doesn't know why
and neither does their fraud prevention service provider that runs some
machine learning/AI system somewhere that decided to flag your transaction. At
least that has been my experience in dealing with these things.

~~~
bob33212
It is an unusual transaction, but we are living in unusual times. And the
fraud detection process has not accounted for that yet.

------
dannysu
I've been a fan of Khan Academy since they were just some Youtube videos.

You can find Khan Academy's past Form 990 online and I've been archiving them.

Sal Khan made:

2008: ? ($0 revenue)

2009: ?

2010: $70,833

2011: $348,879

2012: $348,529

2013: $348,292

2014: $548,116

2015: $800,000

2016: $815,000

2017: $785,000

2018: $824,000

You can see that, just like a startup, the sacrifice in the beginning as a
founder is real. Before 2010 his salary from KA was probably 0 or
significantly less. $70K in 2010 was less than my new grad salary. The jump in
2011 to $350K is around how much a senior makes in HCOL areas now. There has
been basically no adjustment in his earning for 4 years from 2015 to 2018.

From the 990 forms, you can also get a sense of how much other people in the
organization are being paid. I think all of them can command higher
compensation elsewhere, but choose to work at KA because leveling the playing
field for education is such a great mission.

Sal Khan's compensation as a CEO is only ~3.x times of many senior positions
in the organization. Not outrageous at all.

In 2008's Form 990, Sal Khan wrote that KA is being used by 10,000 students
daily. I don't know how many accounts, but growing from that to 71 million in
2018 is incredible. The impact to the world is undeniable.

------
stupidcar
Seems like governments should be funding Khan Academy during this period,
since they are effectively replacing regular public education.

~~~
malandrew
If taxpayers could get vouchers for the money going to education, I'd send
mine to KA instead of public schools. It would be money much better spent.

------
throwaway13337
I quite enjoyed khan academy when it was just Khan doing lectures. They were
terrific.

I can't imagine, though, that servers should account for any sizable amount of
overall expense. Is this really an issue for them? The linked page didn't seem
to talk about it.

~~~
warent
It's a nonprofit organization. I'm not that educated on the topic but I think
that means it's possible to find a breakdown of their expenses somewhere.

~~~
bjterry
You can find their 2018 IRS filing here:
[https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/261...](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/261544963/201912279349301826/full)

I've never read one before, but it looks like their IT spend was $5m of $49m
total expenses on page 10.

I think it's very plausible that a sudden unanticipated increase in IT costs
could cause a cash crunch.

~~~
jka
Thanks for linking to this.

A unique string to find this line item in the linked filing is "Information
technology"

This was their second-largest functional expense area for 2018, behind "Other
salaries and wages".

Although I'm not an accountant it also seemed noteworthy to me that their
"Revenue less expenses" was negative for 2018 (not overwhelmingly in relation
to their assets, but still by a sizable amount).

I'm not really qualified to comment on what that means, but naively it does
seem to imply to me that they can continue to benefit from donations and
external funding.

------
karimf
Here's the video of Sal Khan talking about the donations [0]. Not much
additional information, aside that he said they were already running on
deficit before this crisis.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjGERWYvzqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjGERWYvzqk)

------
drewg123
I was hoping to find more info on the "250% nominal load" mentioned in the
title. However, I didn't see anything about load on the linked page, just a
generic looking donation page.

I'm a bit biased, because I focus on CPU efficiency for a major CDN, but I'd
be super curious what exactly is at 250%? Network bandwidth? CPU? IOPS? Are
there big hammers that they can use to get things back under control without
adding servers, like reducing bitrate, or turning off "fancy" features?

~~~
dangoor
Video playing is mostly handled by YouTube.

Features which use a lot of CPU are tracking learner progress, managing
classrooms, and the like. These features are really important right now as
teachers have moved classes online.

We are in the process of moving this code to Go, which should still be very
productive for us but also reduce how much CPU is required.

~~~
solotronics
Python3 has pretty good built in modules for asyncio, multiprocessing, and
multithreading. Maybe port to py3 and utilize these features as an
intermediate step while you are working on the jump to Go. I like to take a
function for a single work unit "do a single thing" and then call it from a
function utilizing asyncio and multithreading, this link shows a great
examples.

[https://pymotw.com/3/asyncio/executors.html](https://pymotw.com/3/asyncio/executors.html)

~~~
dangoor
For reasons I touch on in our blog post[1], porting to Python 3 would still be
a huge amount of work (not quite as large as the port to Go, but still very
large and without other benefits we get from Go).

[1]:
[http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm](http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm)

------
robinhouston
I’m a bit surprised it’s so little. Our servers are at something like 1000% of
normal load. We’re a data visualisation company: naively I would have expected
online education to be affected more than us, rather than less.

~~~
ipsum2
It helps that Khan Academy's videos are hosted on Youtube. I imagine thats a
large chunk of the bandwidth.

------
kvz
Went ahead and offered them our encoding service at cost-price

------
discordance
Worthy internet causes: Khan Academy, Wikipedia and Electronic Frontier
Foundation

Any other suggestions?

~~~
tehlike
ACLU maybe?

~~~
tehlike
Why the downvotes? What am I missing about ACLU?

------
alex_duf
Time to use webtorrents to lower the bandwidth cost?

~~~
dangoor
Our videos are largely served by YouTube.

------
gigatexal
I donated what I could. They’re doing amazing work

~~~
dangoor
Thank you!

------
op03
Would moving to torrents reduce the load? Kiwix seems to able to distribute
offline wikipedia stackoverflow etc that way -
[https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages](https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages)

~~~
sim_card_map
They can also move from Python.

~~~
RenierZA
Here is the article explaining their plans to move to Go.

[https://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm](https://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm)

------
Joe_Ewing
As an educator, this service is an invaluable supplemental resource for my
kids. Especially now. Just donated without hesitation. I hope you all consider
doing the same if you have the means.

------
Mandatum
Please register Khan Academy in other jurisdictions so I can claim tax breaks.
Specifically: UK, Australia and Canada.

Look to how Effective Altruism has setup its various entities around the
world.

------
11235813213455
In the other way, there might be plenty businesses using too much energy for
their current usages/load

------
jason0597
I gave them about 4 pounds, the videos did help me and I feel like I have to
give something back

~~~
dangoor
thanks!

------
polskibus
Shouldn't they address public cloud owners for resources directly?

------
Farfromthehood
PornHub didn't ask for help. Just sayin'

~~~
skinnymuch
Look into the parent company of Pornhub, the exploitation they do, and the
semi-duopoly they are a part of.

I’d hope people don’t want people in porn to get screwed over figuratively
too.

------
boromi
Done.. wish them the best of luck

~~~
dangoor
Thank you!

------
maest
Not that familiar with Khan Academy, but shouldn't their income also be at
250% normal load?

~~~
kiba
They don't charge anything for the content.

~~~
maest
They do have an income source, though.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Their income source is donations. They do not monetize their users, so an
increase in users is pure cost.

~~~
maest
I'm talking about the "Earned Income" section they show here:
[https://khanacademyannualreport.org/financial-
information/](https://khanacademyannualreport.org/financial-information/) (you
have to scroll down to the second piechart)

It's separate from donations and gifts.

------
wendyshu
Salman Khan takes $800k/yr from Khan Academy donations for himself, maybe he
should donate.

~~~
dlss
He spent a decade of nights-and-weekends effort on making kids better at math
and science, taking what I understand to be startup level risks in the
beginning. How much do you think he should make? Mr. Rogers was paid more than
$800k/year if you adjust for inflation[1][2].

[1] [https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-
celebrities/actors...](https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-
celebrities/actors/fred-rogers-net-worth/)

[2]
[https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1...](https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=139000&year=1968)

~~~
wendyshu
If he thinks other people should donate a whole bunch of money, shouldn't he
donate a whole bunch of money if he has it? Maybe he already does this, I
don't know. If he took a lower salary he would effectively be doing this -- in
a publicly verifiable way. It's a matter of "skin in the game".

------
notokay
Khan Academy don't care about users feedback for years, so, no donations from
me.

[https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/community/posts/115...](https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/community/posts/115001114611-Reset-Unit-Tests)

~~~
wccrawford
Donating or not is up to you, and absolutely your choice.

But that link shows that they _did_ listen, they understood, they debated, and
they decided that they don't _want_ that functionality. They think it's
counter-productive for how they're trying to educate their students.

Right or wrong, you can't say they don't care. Merely that they don't agree
with you.

------
happy-go-lucky
I think the increase in load is due to school closures as a result of
COVID-19.

~~~
mustardo
you sure?

------
dirtydroog
Google given them $10m per year. Are they on GCP? Are they pissing money away
on MemoryStore instances? Turn off load balancer logs. Are their servers
running javascript?

------
ibeckermayer
Khan Academy is a $40m/yr non-profit that provides better lessons than the
multi billion $ government enforced Prussian-pedagogy propaganda centers (at
infinite scale and for close to zero charge for the end user)

------
dmayle
(Replying to a trollish comment, but don't want to push it to the top). There
was a comment about the salary that CEO Sal Khan takes, with is over $800,0000
per year.

I think Khan Academy is fantastic, and was going to donate until I saw this
figure (verified). I think that it's entirely inappropriate to extract that
much from the donations.

~~~
kharak
Yes, truly terrible that non-profit organisations serving the common good
should provide high salaries. Founder and employees should just go into
banking, because those guys absolutely deserve their high pay.

Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid
career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror.

~~~
JensRex
Try arguing with less snark.

Every comment like yours attacks the strawman that the CEO and employees
should not get paid. Nobody is saying that. But I'm absolutely not going to
donate anything while the CEO takes out over 800000 dollars in pay, and it
looks distasteful to me to go around begging for donations.

~~~
kharak
I hold the position represented by Dan Palotta in this Ted Talk:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong)

There is nothing distasteful about non-profit CEOs wanting high pay. We're
speaking about the founder of something that has and is helping millions of
people around the world with arguably one of the most difficult and important
educational needs. Khan Academy wouldn't be here without Khan himself and the
world would be lesser for it. I see absolutely no reason why the CEO of such
an organizations shouldn't paid in the same manner as for-profits.

I'm snarky, because the implied notion of "people doing good instead of
chasing profits don't deserve the same pay/good life" is nothing short of
crazy to me.

~~~
dirtydroog
There is something distasteful about them wanting high pay _and_ extra
donations to cover an unseen expense.

~~~
lern_too_spel
$800k is an experienced engineer's salary where Khan Academy is based.

~~~
dirtydroog
Lol, what

~~~
lern_too_spel
Khan Academy is based in Mountain View. There are plenty of engineers getting
that annual compensation at Facebook/Google/Netflix.

