Archive:Form 990 Questions and Answers (2006)

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Q/A for Form 990, fiscal year ending June 30, 2007

When did you file the 06-07 990, and where can I find it?

The 06-07 990 was filed to the IRS on May 12, 2008, and has now been posted on the Foundation wiki in the "Form 990 (PDF)" section. It will also eventually propagate to other websites such as the ones belonging to the Foundation Center, Guidestar, etc.

What are your legal responsibilities for posting the form 990?

By law, we must submit the full form 990 to the IRS, and if members of the public request, we must also provide suitable copies for their review. As part of the Wikimedia Foundation's commitment to accountability and transparency, and to make it easy for people to find it, we post the form 990 as a PDF on the Foundation website.

When is next year's 990 expected to be filed?

The filing deadline for the 990 is "the 15th day of the 5th month after [an] organization's accounting period ends." Because our fiscal year ends on June 30, our 990 due date is November 15. Therefore, our next 990 is expected to be filed sometime prior to November 15, 2008.

On page 5, section V-A, there is a list of “current officers,” which includes people who are no longer on the board (e.g., Angela Beesley) and does not include people who are currently on the board (e.g., Michael Snow). Why?

The list in section V-A is intended to be current for 2006-07, meaning, it includes anyone who was on the board for all, or any part, of that fiscal year.

What is the $6000 for accounts receivable from Wikia? Is this money they owe you?

For the relevant period of this return, the fiscal year that ended in 2006, we included $6000 in accounts receivable from Wikia. For a brief time the Foundation and Wikia shared some office space and other resources. That $6000 reflects the amount we collected from Wikia as part of the resource sharing we undertook. We are obliged to include this kind of information in the form 990.

The funds were received from Wikia - we no longer have any arrangements to this effect with Wikia.

On page 8, the question is asked "Are any officers related to each other through family or business relationships?" Given that several individuals who were on the Board during 06-07 (Jimmy, Angela, and Michael Davis) were also involved with Wikia, how can this answer be no?

At first glance, it does seem like this question should be answered “yes.” However, the IRS provides non-profits with detailed guidelines regarding what it considers a "business relationship."

Whether or not there is a business relationship hinges upon the amount of direct compensation (salary) a person receives, as well as the amount of stock they own. In the case of Jimmy, Angela and Michael, none of them received sufficient compensation, nor owned sufficient stock, to qualify as having a business relationship under the IRS guidelines. Therefore, the question is properly answered no. We have reviewed this issue in detail with Wikia and with our audit firm, and we are satisfied that the question is answered accurately.

On Schedule A, line 26b, you reference a list of donations that will not be filed or disclosed publicly. And in Schedule B, there is information given about contributors, that has been blacked out. Why are you not disclosing this information publicly? Don't you have to?

IRS regulations stipulate that we must supply the IRS with the names of major donors, and we have done so. We are not obliged to make this information public, and indeed, it is normal not to. In general, the Wikimedia Foundation aims to preserve the anonymity of its donors unless they explicitly give us permission to do otherwise.

If they give us permission, their information will be released, and they will be thanked, on our Benefactors page on the Wikimedia Foundation website. However, for administrative ease and simplicity, our general practice will be to not disclose their names on the 990 form, in compliance with IRS regulations. This is completely standard practice: the IRS, Guidestar and other organizations generally consider this information to be confidential.

Your 2005 990 identifies who audited your records, but this one doesn't - why?

When we filed our 2005 form 990, we didn't know that it's not common practice to share this information publicly. It's our auditor's preference that their information not be released, which is fine with us.