[1] The Wikimedia Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki-based content in languages across the world.

The foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from readers and editors, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The project was originally funded by Bomis, Wales's for-profit business, and edited by a rapidly growing community of volunteer editors.

The early community discussed a variety of ways to support the ongoing costs of upkeep, and was broadly opposed to running ads on the site,[12] so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence.

[20] On December 11, 2006, the foundation's board noted that it could not become a membership organization, as initially planned but not implemented, due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida statutory law.

Considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners, a better talent pool, as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel.

[28] The same announcement noted a shifting focus towards smaller companies with similar data needs, supporting the service through "a lot paying a little".

The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations.

[51] By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia, citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer hurricanes".

Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the double bracket style was incorporated later.

In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker.

[73] The Wikimedia Foundation was founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales so that there would be an independent charitable entity responsible for company domains and trademarks, and so that Wikipedia and its sister projects could be funded through non-profit means in the future.

[74][75] The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media, was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Wikipedia mailing list in March 2003,[76] three months after Wiktionary became the second wiki-based project hosted on the original server.

It also engages in political advocacy regarding copyright, press freedom and legal protection of websites from liability related to user content.

[79] The Wikimedia Foundation mainly finances itself through donations from the public, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia, as well as grants from various tech companies and philanthropic organizations.

The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, was a source of revenue for a number of years.

[156] In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri joined the board before stepping down amid community controversy about a "no poach" agreement he executed when at Google, which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US$415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees.

[157][158] As of January 2024, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Victoria Doronina, Mike Peel and Lorenzo Losa);[159] five Board-appointed trustees (McKinsey & Company director Raju Narisetti,[160] Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei,[161] technology officer Luis Bitencourt-Emilio, Nataliia Tymkiv, and financial expert Kathy Collins); and Wales.

Doran, found to have had a criminal record,[170] left the foundation in July 2007 and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor; she became the executive director in December 2007.

[171] Florence Devouard cited Doran's departure from the organization as one of the reasons the foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.

Former chief communications officer Katherine Maher (joined Wikimedia in 2014[116]) was appointed the interim executive director, a position made permanent in June 2016.

[188] Attorney Matt Zimmerman has said, "Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created encyclopedia content.

L-1400-14) involving Wikipedia editors was filed with the Mercer County Superior Court in New Jersey seeking, inter alia, compensatory and punitive damages.

[194][195] In a March 10, 2015, op-ed for The New York Times, Wales and Tretikov announced the foundation was filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency and five other government agencies and officials, including DOJ, calling into question its practice of mass surveillance, which they argued infringed the constitutional rights of the foundation's readers, editors and staff.

U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III ruled that the plaintiffs could not plausibly prove they were subject to upstream surveillance, and that their argument is "riddled with assumptions", "speculations" and "mathematical gymnastics".

[201] In September 2020, WMF's application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked after objections from the government of China[202] over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan.

[207] In 2014, Jimmy Wales was confronted with allegations that WMF had "a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works".

Such campaigns have additionally been condemned for, in 2021, being run in countries that had been badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Argentina and Brazil,[210] as well as for sparking fears in India that Wikipedia might be "dying".

The author criticized the Wikimedia Foundation for its ever-increasing annual spending, which, he argued, could put the project at financial risk should an unexpected event happen.

While the Tides Foundation has promised to become a more transparent 501(c)(3) organization to reveal how it manages funds, details on expenses and salaries are still lacking seven years later.