

Ask HN: Where exactly does wikimedia spend $28M+ this year? - WilhelmJ

I was looking at wikimedia's projected spending for current financial year and was quite surprised to see it is $28.3 Million. I have uploaded a screenshot here:<p>http://i.imgur.com/WvBlY.png<p>Original here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/37/2011-12_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE_.pdf<p>I understand the server/bandwidth cost, but thats quite low as compared to the total spending for the year. I can't find any details on each type of spending... e.g. $13.3 Mil on employee wages alone, how many employees? What salaries?<p>I trust HN that somebody here would know better. Can somebody help me understand what are the expenses, considering its a non-profit org after all?
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driverdan
From the PDF: "We expect to end the year with staff of 78" Which means people
are receiving crazy high salaries. They spent $1.6MM on travel which seems
crazy to me. Where is all this money going?

Almost 26% of the staff is admin/management (20/78) which also seems very
high.

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duskwuff
Keep in mind that Wikimedia is managing a lot of community volunteers as well
as their direct employees. The travel expenses may include paying for some of
their volunteers to visit them, for instance.

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dotBen
There are lots of reasons why their travel expenses could be so high - I don't
think it moves the conversation forward to suggest arbitrary reasons without
some specific proof.

It's also worth noting the foundation has had issues to expense irregularities
in the past [1], and so if anything there is cause to have pessimistic
assumptions rather than optimistic ones

[1]
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/05/jimmy_wales_and_dann...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/05/jimmy_wales_and_danny_wool/)

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itsnotvalid
Just a comparison, Mozilla Foundation spent 62.8 million US dollars for
software development, unclear for how much is spent on staff.

ref: [http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2010/fa...](http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2010/faq/)

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castewart
Can we assume that Mozilla's software development is more technical than
Wikimedia's software development? I think the only thing they have in common
is that they're both non-profits.

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itsnotvalid
I think Wikimedia would have a harder time to justify their spending.

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madiator
Note for others: the numbers are USDs in thousands. \-- The same document says
"In 2011-12, we plan to grow staff 50% from 78 to 117", so the salary turns
out to be $114k

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dakotasmith
The top number is for salaries, wages, and benefits.

That doesn't just mean what people take home, but payroll taxes, the
employer's typically more expensive side of the benefits contribution toward
health care, and retirement or 401K matching.

I would presume the take home salaries before taxes are about 60% of the 114k
average cost per employee.

Edit: I meant 65%, but then changed to 60%. As I'm in Texas, I didn't even
consider state taxes they might have to pay in California.

