Thanks Lodewikj for your excellent catches. 1. The form-990 covers the period from 01-July 2014 to 30-June 2015. During which the payments of US$ 300,000 to Sue Gardner (SpecialAdvisor) was comparable to Lila Tretikov's (E.D.)
2. The largest contractor was "Jones Day" US$ 1,742,916 (almost 2 million) for legal services. To illustrate the WMF's sheer wastage of donated money (incl. lunch money from Scottish schoolkids) on unnecessary litigation, I cite that the single most prominent case they defended in the period was apparently a domain name dispute (said to billed at US$ 317,490) in which the opposite party (a Wikipedian of long standing) who had only booked the domain name to prevent it from being snaffled by "cyber squatters" had immediately offered to donate it WMF free of cost before the case began. Had WMF accepted that voluntary and good faith donation offer, they would have also got back 75% of the filing fees (a not insubstantial amount). Somebody should report this to the IRS. Dave On 5/19/16, Lodewijk <lodew...@effeietsanders.org> wrote: > Thanks Greg. > > I hope this is a good place also to ask a few questions about the form. > When reading and comparing > <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/27/Form_990_FY_2014-2015_-_Public.pdf> > with previous forms, two things jumped out as 'odd'. Probably there's a > reasonable explanation, and I'm mostly curious for it. They were > conveniently missed in the FAQ > <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1d/Form_990_Questions_and_Answers_2014.pdf> > . > > First, there's an overview of 'highest paid contractors' (for reading > along: page 61) and the top one is a law firm for 1.7 Million USD. Which is > quite a big sum of money. I'm confident this was necessary and unavoidable, > but given the much lower amounts in previous years, what happened in > 2014/2015 that made this necessary? I understood the NSA lawsuit was done > pro bono, which is the most visible thing I remember from that year. > > Second, I noted a steep increase in the costs for the Executive Director > (for readers: someone put together a helpful overview of top salaries here > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries>). I > generally don't like to dig into personal finances, but what really stood > out, was the increase from 200k in 2013/2014 for the ED at that time, and > 300k for the ED in 2014/2015. Now that is an increase of 50% - which is a > lot and partially mitigated by the salary freeze the ED had the three years > before. But what is even more striking, is the additional 300k that was > paid to the outgoing ED, which means basically that the compensation to the > 'ED team' was tripled from 200k to 600k. Could someone touch on this, and > give some pointers to what happened here? Was there a general rationale > behind this, or was the new ED simply a tougher negotiator? Are there any > catches how these numbers are being presented, and how they should be read > and not misinterpreted? > > Best, > Lodewijk > > 2016-05-19 8:52 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>: > >> Hoi, >> For a bit of background form 990 is probably something everybody knows >> about as it is financial and important and that is why we mention this.. >> For all of you who do not know, we have a FAQ where you may find what is >> relevant about all this. >> Thanks, >> GerardM >> >> PS sorry Greg for pulling your leg. :) >> >> On 18 May 2016 at 20:55, Gregory Varnum <gvar...@wikimedia.org> wrote: >> >> > Sent on behalf of Wikimedia Foundation's Finance Team: >> > >> > The Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for FY 2014 - 2015 has been posted on >> the >> > Wikimedia Foundation Wiki's Financial Reports page: >> > https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports >> > >> > A list of answers to frequently asked questions about this form has also >> > been posted on the same page. >> > >> > Please contact Jaime Villagomez or Tony Le with any questions: >> > jvillago...@wikimedia.org or t...@wikimedia.org >> > >> > Thank you, >> > Finance Team >> > Wikimedia Foundation >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately >> > directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia >> > community. 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