
Internet Archive's most recent tax filing (2017) [pdf] - lucb1e
https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/943242767_201712_990_2019020516064517.pdf
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lucb1e
After donating (wrong order, perhaps :-) ) I was wondering where my money
would actually go to. On the website, they give no figures or statistics,
which I find weird. How much does running the site actually cost and how much
is spent on development of new features? I have not been able to find that
among the documentation. All it says[1] about the goal of your donation is:

\- Preserving and storing websites

\- Projects like archiving floppy disks and the Decentralized Web Summit

\- 150 staff members

But how much goes where is unknown. It's even unknown how many employees are
essential for running and maintaining the archive (sysadmins, developers,
administrative) and how many do other useful things.

So instead I turned to the only other public sources, as linked above. What I
find there is that:

\- Of an $18M budget

\- $10M goes to salaries (11 volunteers, thus 10e6/(150-11)=72k gross on
average, almost twice what I earn on my own and what I consider quite
luxurious for a two-person household where both work)

\- The top ten people make 1.5 million (so 150k gross on average)

\- 6.5 million "expenses", of which a few million for scanning, 1.5 million
for "computer expenses" of which only 500k is actual hardware (the rest is
shipping, administrative, and other).

Are these good stats? It seems odd to me that more than half the income ends
up in the pockets of employees, though I'm no guru on what a typical non-
profit's margins are. I would like some insight.

I'm just picking a few things out that seem like the largest expenses, I'm not
saying the money is all wasted (far from it!). I've donated in the past and
plan to do so again. At the same time, I would be curious to hear from someone
who knows more about this topic (for non-profits in general, though IA-
specific info is also welcome).

[1] [https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
us/articles/360002082351-Wher...](https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
us/articles/360002082351-Where-does-my-donation-go-)

