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by praveenster
2395 days ago
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I usually check ratings for a charity by reviewing it on Charity Navigator (which is itself a 501 (c) (3) and in need of donations as well). The rating for the Wikimedia Foundation happens to be really good: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar... I use Wikipedia for reference on various topics on a daily basis and I know my kids do it at school as well. Hence, I donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the approximate cost of my yearly Netflix subscription as they provide huge amounts of valuable information without any ads and to everyone without paywalls. There aren’t very many free services on the web that run without ads. |
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See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Charity Navigator is a fine organization, but they do have the flaw of having to take the charities word on what the core mission is. If the WMF says they need 350 employees -- or 350,000 employees -- to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it. If the WMF says that flying people to exotic locations for Wikimania meetings is needed to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it. If the WMF says that building a search engine to compete with Google is needed to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it.
My position is that Wikipedia was accomplishing that core mission just fine in 2008. I was an active editor in 2008 and I did not notice any pressing needs that were not funded because we were spending 4.3% of what we are spending now. What, exactly, are we doing now that we were not doing ten years ago that justifies us spending 23 three times as much money to do essentially the same job? I could see spending 5 times more, but 23?