Wikimedia Foundation, the company that owns Wikipedia, published their annual report for 2024 that shows they spent US$51.7M on equity and safety & inclusion.
These findings were demonised by Elon Musk on Twitter, who called for people to stop donating to the platform.
It’s unclear what exactly the money is spent on, but a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson attempted to clarify the data to Newsweek while failing to comment on how exactly these funds are spent or how the funds helps them meet their goals.
‘Wikipedia is built on the premise that it becomes better when more people of different backgrounds—including political persuasions—source, edit, curate and research content. Our equity goal advances that’, The spokeperson told Newsweek.
‘The 'Safety & Inclusion' goal (now titled 'Safety & Integrity' in our 2024-2025 plan) is focused on ensuring that people are able to freely access and safely contribute to knowledge on Wikipedia in a changing legal and policy environment globally.’
Despite claims of political neutrality, and despite having access to these funds, the website is known for its intrusive requests for donations, and has been criticised for having an apparent left-wing bias.
When one visits Wikipedia, the site is prone to covering the screen with a request for donations with the implication that Wikipedia is desperate for funding, leading to confusion as to why a million-dollar company needs to engage in such practices.
As a nonprofit organisation that doesn’t run ads on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation relies on grants and donations to run while facilitating open-source contributions to its articles.
However, its biggest expense is reserved for wages, with website hosting being its third lowest expense at US$3M.
At the time of writing, it is still unclear where the funds are directly going or what paid positions there are, despite Wikipedia stating there are approximately 282 staff members.