14 DAY TRIAL // Wikipedia is one of the largest websites on the planet and most people rely on it quite often. But the site has no direct revenue stream, it's run by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. There are no ads, no subscriptions, no nothing, so the site relies solely on donations to survive.
Now, the site is announcing the largest such donation yet, $3.6 million, 2.69€ million, from the Stanton Foundation. The money will go towards supporting Wikimedia's infrastructure to feed the ever growing number of people visiting the site.
"We were very pleased to announce another amazing grant from the US based Stanton Foundation, and our largest grant yet," Wikimedia announced.
"The grant totals $3.6 million USD, and will fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects – specifically to serve our growing readership," it said.
Wikipedia is the fifth largest website on the planet at this point, with 442 million unique visitors in August.
That number is growing and, even though Wikipedia doesn't have a huge page view count, since people come, find what they are looking for and leave, it's still a huge burden on the site's infrastructure.
The money should come in rather handy especially since it's getting to be that time of the year again, that's right, the Wikipedia donation month(s). Each year, in late fall, Wikipedia starts pestering visitors about donations, meant to keep the site alive.
So far, it's been doing great and it's been able to maintain and grow its infrastructure, pay its small full time staff and cover all the other expenses on donations alone.
Most of the donations come from invididuals, but companies have gotten involved from time to time. A couple of years ago, Google donated $2 million, 1.49€ million, to the Wikimedia foundation.
It is not the first time the Stanton Foundation has donated to Wikimedia either, it provided $1.2 million, 890,000€, to fund the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative.