Hi all,
The WMF published its Form 990 for the 2020 calendar year a week ago[1], along with an FAQ on Meta[2].
Some salient points:
1. In 2020, the number of Wikimedia employees whose total compensation and benefits exceeded $300,000 went up to eight. They were:[3]
Katherine Maher, ED ($423,318) Grant Ingersoll, CTO ($355,523) Amanda Keton, GC ($350,292) Jaime Villagomez, CFO ($347,642) Janeen Uzzell, COO ($336,068) Anthony Negrin, CPO ($324,916) Lisa Seitz, CAO ($323,293) Robyn Arville, CT/CO ($306,579)
In part this reflected salary increases of existing executives, in part it was due to three new hires filling C-level vacancies (CTO, COO, CT/CO) at significantly higher compensation levels than their predecessors.
All three of those new hires are no longer with the WMF today, each staying only around two years.
Of the existing executives' salary increases, a couple seem reasonable compared to the previous year's figures,[4] but in one case total compensation went up by over 25% year on year, in another by 14%, without a change in job title. (US inflation was at around 2% from 2010 to 2020.[5])
Note that present-day compensation levels are likely to be 10–15% higher than the 2020 figures above.
2. Overall salary costs rose by $12 million on the year prior (we knew this already from the audited financial statements released in December). The FAQ now clarifies that the number of employees (320 in 2020, vs. 291 in 2019) on page 1 of the Form 990 refers to US employees only, while the salary costs figure given on the same page ($67.9M in 2020 vs. $55.6M in 2019) also includes an unspecified number of non-US employees. I have asked for more detailed information on Meta.
Andreas
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikimedia_Foundation_... [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRS_tax_related_information/2020_Wikimedia_F... [3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundati...
[4] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundati... [5] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/12F13/production/_118478577_opti...