Which well-known charity has a worse program expense percentage of revenue than the Wikimedia Foundation?

I don't know why I'm bothering answering this question, since I already know that "Nancy" is a critic of Wikimedia and won't be interested in my answer (an answer saying "Wikimedia is awful" is going to be picked—prove me wrong!), but this is probably worth some discussion.

First of all, be careful with the statement "well-known". Many charities with well-known projects are not themselves well known, and "well-known" is itself not well-defined. Wikimedia in particular suffers greatly from this: consider the number of people who erroneously think that Wikipedia is professionally edited, to start—they probably have no idea that the Wikimedia Foundation exists, let alone that it's a charity.

Further, you need to consider the nature of the organizations themselves. Certain kinds of organizations have simple missions that are inherently leaner, because they're simple. If you don't take into account the nature of the mission, you risk missing obvious points. For example, an organization designed to feed the poor, etc. should have a very high program expense percentage: the great majority of their money can go directly into food to distribute and the means to distribute it. A museum, on the other hand, will find a great number of other organizational costs, since museums take much more administration to run than food depots. I would be much more comfortable donating to a museum which put 80% of its cost into program services than to a food depot which did the same. Wikimedia is in a class on its own, but when you consider its nature—to provide *administration* and corporate support for its volunteer community—it seems reasonable that Wikimedia falls closer to a museum's profile than to a food depot's. For that reason, I find comparing it with such organizations like the Red Cross to be like comparing apples and oranges: they're not on the same playing field.

Beyond that, it's worth considering the relative growth of the organization. Fast-growing organizations are much more likely to have relatively low program expense percentages: scaling up the ability to manage a large endeavour *requires* overhead. The Wikimedia Foundation is identified by Charity Navigator as the charity that has seen the single most percentage growth recently (< http://charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.d... >), so it's clearly an outlier in that regard. A number of the other organizations identified there have similarly low program expense percentages for their categories, though admittedly there are more "food depot"-type organizations there than "museum"-type organizations, so the comparison is not very dramatic.

Finally, the numbers these comparisons are using (that is, Charity Navigator's ratings) are outdated. The data for the Wikimedia Foundation are from the 2007–2008 financial year; right as the Foundation started to become more professionalized; the Executive Director was only hired partway through that year. The data for that year do show correctly that the Foundation was not as efficient as it could and should be, but they're not the end of the story. If you work off of the 2009–2010 Annual Plan figures, it's reasonable to suggest that the program expense percentage has climbed significantly; to ~74% in 2008–2009 and to ~77% in 2009–2010. (See page 20 of the PDF at < http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a... >). These numbers are much more reasonable, and more accurately reflect the state of the organization. While the efficiency can be improved further, the trend from 2008–2009 to 2009–2010 alone suggests that things are getting better as the organization matures.

Wikimedia's more modern figures suggests that, as it establishes itself, it is becoming more (numerically) efficient than such well-known organizations as the Sundance Institute (< http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=sear... >), B'nai B'rith International (< http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=sear... >), the American Bible Society (< http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=sear... >), the American Cancer Society (< http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=sear... >), among other organizations. I picked those examples from Charity Navigator's search feature using only organizations that are still rated as better than Wikimedia; I've ignored quite a few charities with overall 2-star or lower ratings, which Wikimedia beats even by the 2007–2008 data. While the data for the other charities is similarly aged, it's a reasonable assumption that, given the relative growths (Wikimedia's percent growth dwarfs theirs), their program expense percentages are not likely to have increased significantly.

Of course, none of these can appropriately measure impact, and there's little quantitative data (for most charities!) that can be presented there. That's where I'd like to see research.

Wikipedia seems to be a special case in that the main goal of the paid staff is to support thousands of volunteers. Since the product of Wikipedia is the encyclopedia, and the Foundation's other information projects, almost all of the work is done by volunteers. As a result, an abnormally high percentage of the budget would be "program expenses", since the work of the volunteers is considered to have no value, since they are not being paid for the service they provide.

While acknowledging that it's important for charities to get more bang for their buck, it's more illuminating to compare total budgets. The American Red Cross, to take another well-known non-profit that depends a lot of volunteers as an example, has a budget of $3.4 billion. The Wikimedia Foundation's proposed budget for the coming year is $10.6 million. This is comparing apples and oranges since you don't go to Wikipedia for a blood transfusion and you don't go to the Red Cross to learn what photosynthesis is, but the Wikimedia Foundation operating on one-third of one percent of the budget of the American Red Cross doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

My husband and I have both been homeless or with a home but too poor to buy much food (even with foodstamps) and we went to the food banks for 'donated food' ... MOST OF IT WAS NOT GOOD FOOD ... people give 'outdated' cans they should throw away, broken (smashed) pasta, mixed dried beans that need different amounts of soaking and cooking time ... even vegetables they don't want to eat because they are wilted and dried out. When I give to a foodbank (which we do regularly) I go to the store and buy NEW basics ... boxes of pasta (the best they have, too), NEW cans of food, fresh flour, fresh vegetables, canned meat and canned juices, baby food in all varieties ... then I take it and drop it off with a 'I hope this helps' and a big smile ... if I hang around, I tell the people that we once were where they are, and we have money now, so we are just 'paying back' what we were given ... and people hold up their heads and think that they are just 'down for awhile' instead of being 'down forever' ... it's not SELFISH to feed a person who needs food ... an old person, a worker, a mother, a father, a child ... PEOPLE DESERVE TO GO TO BED FEELING FULL AND KNOWING THEY'LL GET FULL THE NEXT DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR. Donate GOOD FOOD (even if it means you must eat a bit less for a day or two a month) and the world will be a BETTER PLACE for ALL of us!

It's a difficult question. There are a lot worse charities than Wikimedia in the program expense percentage department, but most of them either shape up or are exposed as frauds, then forgotten. So Wikimedia is quite successful in spending such a paltry percentage on program expenses and still managing to be well-known.

A much easier question would be which well-known charity has a better percentage. There are plenty to choose from, both well-known and not so well-known. All's Wool chooses the Natural Resources Defense Council, which spends close to 80% on program expenses. On Charity Navigator I even saw some that manage to spend 103% (I don't know how that's even possible).

This issue is important. You have "The Joy" on Wikipedia Review, someone who donates his time to Wikipedia, unwilling to donate his money because of the lousy percentage. "If I ever donate to WP, I want 100% of my donations to go to the upkeep of the site, not paying the Great Flounder to go around the world eating caviar and saying "Ain't free information grand?" Couldn't he just e-mail people and say its great or write an essay instead of wasting donors' money?"

He's certainly not alone. Even so, the Wikimedia Foundation still hits its donation targets each year.

According to the Attorney General of Oregon, the worst charity last year was the Association for Firefighters and Paramedics; I donated to them once and they have never stopped bugging for a second donation. With a revenue of a little more than $3 million, they managed to spend only a hundred thou on program expenses.

First of all, to the answerer who said "red cross": WRONG. The American Red Cross spends 90.1% of its revenues on program expenses. The Wikimedia Foundations spends just 66.3%.

Now, 66.3% is not the worst, but it's clearly not the best. On Charity Navigator I found a list of "10 Charities Drowning in Administrative Costs." They all make Wikimedia look pretty damn good by comparison. The Boys Choir of Harlem, for example, spends just 33.6% on program expenses. But it's hardly well-known. I'd never even heard of the others on that list.

So, for a charity as well-known as Wikimedia, it is one of the worst when it comes to per-dollar spending on its stated purpose.

Wikipedia hater! Nothing else needs to be said now that Nihiltres has laid some major wisdom on your a$$.

I am working as an online volunteer for this charity house

http://www.lambofaces.com/

I think we should work for any charity like this

red cross

ps because I know what the term program expenses means

Guidestar.org is a much better resource for research on not for profit organizations.