Seems it'd be far more reasonable to direct the excess funds into an endowment of sorts instead of spending it on other areas.

If they did that they'd already have a big enough endowment to fund all of Wikimedia for life.

Well, Wikimedia does have an Endowment, currently valued at $169 million. See Form 990:

https://wikimediaendowment.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20...

This is in addition to assets of around $300 million held by the Wikimedia Foundation. Form 990:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...

For expenses breakdown see the most recent audited accounts:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wiki...

$169 million is not too big for an endowment, especially considering how much they had been raising AND spending in the years prior.

Long-term it'd be best for Wikipedia if it was self-funded through this, like Harvard, for instance.

I don’t know if you’re joking or not but of course Wales doesn’t profit directly from this. And, as a non-profit, compensation of executives is public knowledge. I believe Board members get zero compensation other than reimbursement for travel expenses.

(Jimmy Wales did cash in on his reputation with some ads for luxury watches and idk what else he does for $).

Salaries at the WMF have absolutely exploded, though they started out very low given the location and the talent base they were competing for. You probably want the WMF to be a somewhat competitive employer, and Silicon Valley salaries are also through the roof across the board. So those $400K executive salaries are (grating my teeth) vaguely justifiable.

A volunteer-run page summarizes salary progression in key roles (up to 2024)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

So you can be assured your money isn’t going to the executives’ bank accounts, not directly anyway. However, this is precisely why non-profit organizations tend to get bloated. The executives can’t get away with a million dollar salaries and not other goodies like stock grants. But you can justify staffing up, which benefits the careers of the executives.

What would justify Silicon Valley salary for an organization that can be based anywhere in the world? They are not doing advanced R&D, or product dev that would justify big numbers or a very specific set of skills.

The same as any other organization - they would not be able to attract or afford the right talent.

Also, these are not Silicon Valley numbers. Similar roles as those listed would pay 1.5-2x in the private sector here in the Bay.

Even Wikipedia Foundation's European salaries [0] are well above market rate in the geos listed (Italy, Germany) [1][2].

> They are not doing advanced R&D, or product dev that would justify big numbers or a very specific set of skills

Wikimedia's assets are some of the most heavily visited sites globally and are often a target for attacks (both nation state and independently led).

It takes a nontrivial amount of effort to maintain a platform like Wikimedia's.

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/wikimedia-foundation/salari...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/italy

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/germany

What's up with the continually revolving CTO chair? (under Executive)

Look at their salaries. Most are earning significantly less than what they would have earned in the private sector for the same role in a significantly more stressful job.

Compensation only started catching up in 2021-22.

Salary aside, I'd still have assumed Wikimedia would be able to find a CTO who wouldn't jump ship the next year.

Either they're really bad at picking, or the job is really bad.

> Either they're really bad at picking, or the job is really bad

Def the latter in the sense that it is a very high stress job with weak compensation and high risk of being targeted.

Feels like where Mozilla went

Great analogy.