Wikimedia Foundation
American nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and 13 other free knowledge projects, empowering global knowledge sharing since 2003.
Wikimedia Foundation – Who We AreThe Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales to provide a permanent, non-commercial home for Wikipedia and related wiki projects. Its mission is to empower people worldwide to collect, develop, and share free knowledge.
The Foundation currently hosts 14 collaborative free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia, Wikidata, and others. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world and the only top-10 most-visited site operated by a nonprofit. The Foundation maintains servers, develops software, and builds the technology infrastructure that keeps these projects running, while content decisions are made entirely by a global volunteer community.
The WMF supports a community of over 265,000 active contributors across 170 nations. As of 2023, it employs over 700 staff and contractors, holds net assets of $255 million, and an endowment exceeding $100 million. Funding comes primarily from small reader donations averaging $11, with no reliance on advertising or user data sales. The Foundation also awards over $9 million annually in grants to Wikimedia community members and nonprofit partners.
Given its role as a large-scale operator of open, collaboratively built knowledge infrastructure, the Foundation is highly relevant to innovations in open data, knowledge access, volunteer community management, and digital rights advocacy.