Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee/2019-06-04

Wikimedia Foundation

Audit Committee Meeting

June 4, 2019

9:00 – 10:30 am PDT

Participating in Person: James Baldwin, Tanya Capuano, Tony Le, Katherine Maher, Janeen Uzzell, Jaime Villagomez, Amy Vossbrinck

Participating Remotely: Christophe Henner, Raju Narisetti, Maria Sefidari, Michael Snow

Approval of Minutes

Raju moved to approve - Tanya seconded - minutes were unanimously approved.

Medium Term plan and the annual plan and budget overview- Presented by Katherine Maher, ED

Medium planning transition: The Foundation is moving from 12 month planning to 3 - 5 year planning.

The Medium Term Plan previously presented to the Board remains as: Our primary Goals (Growing participation globally, focusing on emerging markets and Modernizing our product experience); Priorities (Thriving movement, Platform evolution, Worldwide readership, Global advocacy, and Brand awareness); and Essentials (Organizational efficacy).

Annual plan and budget Fundraising: Established a target of $110M for FY 2019-2020, which excludes interest income Operating plans proposed by the WMF teams included 60 deliverables, those were narrowed down to 18; all of which address our Goals and Priorities described under the Medium Term Plan

Thriving movement: We are investing in a thriving, safe, and diverse movement by building capacity across Community Engagement and Product to diversity content and creators, to protect user privacy and safety, and to invest in our future. We are looking at how people can contribute through micro editing from their phones, perhaps doing small edits like grammar or spelling corrections. Editing can be a steep learning curve, how can we support and keep new editors?

Platform evolution: We are paying down debt, and investing in the future. We have an 18 year old platform that needs upgrading. We are looking to reduce the complexity of the Platform. We will maintain content integrity and prevent manipulation. We maintain our data centers and self host as opposed to storing information in the cloud. We continue to hire site reliability engineers to support our data centers.

Worldwide readership: We are planning for a facelift and building infrastructure for future experiences. We need to be sure that our site remains unique in its presentation; we want to maintain our “recognizability”, we don’t want to look like all other sites. We are doing work with design, research, and the community to bring a new look to the Wikipedia sites.

Global advocacy: We are speaking out with a strong voice to maintain the environment in which we operate. We are investing in a more powerful lobbying presence in critical jurisdictions and policymaking bodies. We are developing a platform that positions free knowledge as a policy priority.

Brand awareness: We speak for people and the public trust. Our values are not common across the internet. We are working with our communities to clarify and align our brands and marks. We are unifying our identity around a mission that speaks for people and the public trust.

Budget: We are allocating $111.5m in operating expenditures $100.6M Existing Investments $8.9M New Investments Personnel Brand Marketing Data Center Expense $2M Opportunity Fund The plan was unanimously approved by the Audit Committee and recommended for approval by the Board.

Financial update - presented by Jaime Villagomez, CFO

FY18-19 EOY Projection Projected revenue for the fiscal year is $115.3 with is 24% more than originally anticipated. As of June the Foundation employees 342 people.

Cash & investments portfolio - presented by Tony Le, Controller

The Foundation’s cash and investment portfolio continued to grow with it yielding $1.8 M between July 2018 - April 2019. The investments are distributed as follows: $74.8M Cash, $91.8M Short term investments, and $11.5 M in Long Term investments. We maintain our goal of a 6-9 month cash reserve.

Audit Timeline and next Audit Committee meeting dates

Next Audit Committee Meetings

July 31 - August 2 Next Audit Committee Meeting - KPMG will advise regarding the audit plan.

Sept 23 - 27 Audit will be presented and will need committee approval. Amy will poll on dates and set meetings.

Audit

August 12 - 23 Audit Planning work

August 26 - September 13 - Field work

September 16 - 20 Draft Independent Auditor’s Report Finalization

Respectfully submitted by: Amy Vossbrinck