Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-05-28/Special report



The Wikimedia Foundation last week released its 990 tax form for 2014–15, which revealed a major surprise: after her departure as executive director in mid-2014, Sue Gardner was still one of the foundation's two highest-paid employees, with total compensation for her role as a "special advisor" amounting to US$320,057. This is over $100,000 more than the $218,529 total indicated on page 48 of the tax form for the previous year.

While the tax form reports that Ms Gardner's base compensation dropped from $200,000 in 2013–14 to $112,500 in 2014–15, "other reportable compensation" increased from $1,685 in 2013–14 to $188,841 in 2014–15, resulting in an overall increase in Ms Gardner's compensation of almost 50 percent.

The Signpost sent the following questions to the chair of the WMF board, Patricio Lorente, and chief financial officer Jaime Villagomez:

Mr Villagomez only replied to refer us to the chair, who responded as follows:

As these were rationales for creating Ms Gardner's special advisor role rather than descriptions of actual work performed, we then asked for some concrete examples of what Ms Gardner had done in the financial year. Mr Lorente responded:

We leave it to the community to judge whether these responses are satisfactory, and whether this activity justifies an apparent $100,000 increase in Ms Gardner's compensation over what she received as a full-time executive director.

According to the 2014–15 tax form, the Foundation also paid two law firms in excess of $1.9 million for undisclosed "legal services" (p. 61). This is more than four times the total for the previous year (p. 57 in last year's report). On the Wikimedia-l mailing list, WMF communications strategist Gregory Varnum indicated that a significant portion of these expenses went toward efforts to strengthen the Foundation's trademark portfolio:

Tony1 assisted in the preparation of this story.


 * Update (June 9, 2016)

In response to ongoing questions from Wikipedia volunteers, Wikimedia Foundation chair Patricio Lorente provided an additional explanation to the community on June 8, 2016, in an email to the Wikimedia-l mailing list. This is quoted here in full: