Dear all,

I've been asked to explain what the issue with the Endowment is. Here is a recap: 

Over the past seven years, WMF staff have collected donations from the public to build an Endowment that stood at $113.4 million a year ago (the most recent update available).

The important thing that I and, I suspect, most of us didn't realise for many years is this:[1] 

1. The money held in the Endowment is not included in the net assets of the Wikimedia Foundation, as those funds are held by the Tides Foundation. 

2. Donations to the Endowment that are received by the Wikimedia Foundation as a pass-through are redirected and sent to the Tides Foundation. Therefore, they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials as revenue or net assets. 

3. When the Wikimedia Foundation makes special grants to the Endowment Fund, those are reflected as "Awards and Grants" expenses on the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Independent Auditors' Report.

This means that under the past and present arrangement, all the auditors at KPMG have ever included in their annual audit reports were the annual $5 million+ grants sent to Tides, recorded as an expense. Any money people donated to the WMF specifically for the Endowment bypassed the audited financial statements.

In addition, for the past two years, all the money people have willed to the Wikimedia Foundation has been redirected to the Wikimedia Endowment instead (except in cases where the terms of the will prevent that), adding to these tens of millions of dollars of pass-through amounts that bypass the Foundation's audited financial statements.[2]

As a result, there is a significant lack of of transparency and public oversight in the past and present arrangement with Tides. Over $100 million in donations and planned gifts collected from the public is too significant an amount to say, "It's alright. We don't need to see any paperwork. We know you are good people." 

Andreas

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=prev&oldid=21366511
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Remit_of_Planned_Gifts_to_the_Wikimedia_Endowment?tableofcontents=0

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 11:08 PM Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Caitlin,

Thank you for the clarification. Is there any chance we might see audited financial statements covering the Endowment's past seven years, in a format comparable to the annually published, audited financial statements detailing the revenue and expenses of the Foundation,[1] and delivering the same level of transparency?

If not, why not?

Best,
Andreas

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 9:19 PM Caitlin Virtue <cvirtue@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi Christophe,


This thread has circled around the main question of will any decisions around the endowment be transparent. The answer is yes.


The question of transparency has also become conflated with the mechanism of how the money is held. The answer here is that we are working to transition endowment funds out of Tides to the separate 501(c)(3) entity that is already registered and the transition process will soon be underway. 


Finally, to answer some questions that came up directly: 

Is the Endowment an independent 501(c)(3) entity? Yes.

Is the money currently managed by Tides? Yes.

Will the money transition out of Tides to the new 501(c)(3)? Yes.


You can also find a similar reply that we gave earlier, on meta. 


Regards,

Caitlin Virtue

Senior Director of Development

Wikimedia Foundation


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