Press kit/Wikimedia Foundation

The rapid growth of Wikipedia and the development of related free-knowledge projects which complement it suggested the need for an infrastructure to support these altruistic endeavors. Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in St. Petersburg, Florida to provide this infrastructure, and was approved by the U.S. IRS as a 501(c)3 non-profit educational foundation in the category "Adult, continuing education" in April of 2003. In addition to allowing U.S. tax-deductible donation to pay for hardware and bandwidth expenses, the Foundation is a central organizing point for continuing development, new projects, and administrative responsibilities.

As befits a volunteer-driven organization, most everyone in Wikimedia Foundation serves in multiple roles. Members of the 5-member Board of Trustees recently hired an interim Executive Director to oversee the Foundation while also serving as General Counsel. Committees of volunteers organize to meet the Foundation's needs such as communications, fundraising, or special projects under the Board's approval. Each project, such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, or Wiktionary, is approved by the Board but once approved develops its own internal structures for oversight so are semi-autonomous and self-governing with the Foundation providing servers and bandwidth but not involved in the day-to-day editorial and community governance.

The system-level infrastructure is by far the greatest cost for the Foundation, with hardware purchases and bandwidth expenditures amounting to XX% of the budget in 2005.