[legitster]

If I'm donating money to fight cancer, and the majority of the money goes to administrative staff, that's inherently a flawed charity. It's exactly what led to the downfall of the Susan G Komen foundation.

There's also a death spiral problem. If donations drop and administrative costs stay the same, that charity's ratings only get worse.

There's a reason most examples of successful non-profit unions all rely on steady streams of government grant funding.

[skywhopper]

What do you think the core purpose of the Wikipedia Foundation is? Do you think the engineers who write the code and operate the site are “administrative staff”?

[appreciatorBus]

If a new software or hardware innovation came along that would allow the engineers to operate the site 2x more efficiently, thus saving the foundation and it's donors a significant amount of money, would the union support it or fight it?

[jp_sc]

Is there any charity (older than five years) where the majority of the money doesn’t go to administrative staff?

[pas]

yes, check program expense ratios

https://www.charitynavigator.org/discover-charities/best-cha...

but see also

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/blog/arent-the-best-charitie...

and

https://www.givewell.org/

[iririririr]

this is all insane. it assumes you want charity forever! the initial assumption is already wrong.

also, back on topic:

Executive Salaries Position Salary (Annual)

Ex-CEO (Katherine Maher) $789,495

COO (Janeen Uzzell) $503,844

CFO (Jaime Villagomez) $386,433

General Counsel (Amanda Keton) $396,514

Current Highest Salaries Position Salary (Annual)

Software Engineering Manager $164,080

Technical Program Manager $159,200

Senior Software Engineer $109,513

Product Designer $95,972

Additional Salary Insights

    The median total compensation for employees at the Wikimedia Foundation is approximately $109,513.

[pas]

did you mean to reply to my comment? if yes, can I ask you to explain what do you mean by assumption? where is that coming from?

regarding WMF (and other non-profits, like Mozilla), this is a well-known phenomenon - regarding C-suite compensation (it's usually about risk aversion, and that the board or whatever foundations have, is also usually sitting on other non-profits, and rarely they optimize by moving to the cheapest place and hiring folks for much cheaper, etc)