Here’s my take on Wikimedia’s Year Ended 6/30/06 IRS form 990: There is a nice growth in Revenue that is up to $1.4 million. A year ago it was $.36 million so that’s close to quadrupling. Their fund balances now stand at about $1 million and that is almost an increase of 300%. Their ending cash was about $500,000. The return shows that it is in a non-interest bearing account. This may be a typo since later there is reported a reasonable amount of interest income. Most of the rest of their assets is equipment and we can guess what that is. They own about $78,000 of Google stock, which by the way had appreciated as of 6/30/06, and someone might ask, why not diversify?

Their debt isn’t even worth mentioning. T-Shirt sales brought in only $8,575 and I am disappointed with the volunteers about that. None of the big five on the Board is getting paid as far as I can see. They disclose Wikimedia's relationship with Wikia, Inc. If the general question is, do they have anything in common with another entity, the answer is Yes. Have a look at page 6 of the 990 for the exact wording.

To sum up what they spend money on it is, servers and what appears to be a modest payroll of around $100,000. There was about a $400,000 increase in fixed assets for the year, and I assume most of that is servers. What they didn’t spend money on, went to build up the cash account mentioned above.

My final take on this form 990 is that the accountants aren't charging enough to do it.

I have not audited, reviewed, compiled or in any way gotten within 1000 miles of Wikimedia's books, and therefore do not express any sort of opinion on them as a Certified Public Accountant. The thing that CPA's fear the most is not the IRS, it's lawyers.   The complete filing retrieved from GuideStar

 

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