Wikimedia Foundation departments

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) maintains a professional staff to support the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia projects. The staff are organized under the leadership of the organization's Executive Director. They are primarily based at the organization's headquarters in San Francisco, USA, while some staff work remotely from other parts of the world.

The Wikimedia Foundation staff are organized into eight departments, each led by an executive. Some of the departments are composed of multiple teams and sub-teams.

Advancement

The Advancement department leads the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising and resource partnership efforts.

Advancement teams

Endowment

Foundation and Major Gifts

Fundraising Operations

Online Fundraising

Partnerships and Global Reach

Audiences

The Audiences department refers to the engineering and product teams employed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its mission is to build, improve and maintain the technical infrastructure of Wikimedia projects (software and hardware), by supporting and complementing volunteer efforts.

Audiences teams

Community Tech

Editors

Readers

Communications

The Communications department leads the Foundation's efforts to openly and effectively share information—about the Wikimedia movement, the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia Foundation's work itself—with a global audience including volunteer editors, site readers and other stakeholders.

Community Engagement

The Community Engagement department team increases the quantity, quality, diversity, and reach of free knowledge by supporting people and organizations aligned with the Wikimedia Foundation mission. We support contributors by representing them in the development of new technical tools, by supporting community governance, and by making grants to individuals, groups and organizations working on building community and growing content on Wikimedia projects and sites as well as related open knowledge projects. We are committed to supporting under-resourced and emerging regions, languages and communities, particularly in the Global South.

Community Engagement teams

Learning & Evaluation

The Learning & Evaluation team supports learning and sharing tools for connecting community leaders to one another, to resources, and to capacity development opportunities.

Ressourcen

The Resources team increases the quantity, quality, diversity, and reach of free knowledge by supporting mission-allied organizations and people around the world.

Support, Safety and Programs

Support, Safety and Programs serves the Wikimedia Foundation, readers and contributors by providing support on Foundation initiatives with a dual focus: (1) programs support for individuals and organizations involved in the Wikipedia Education Program, the Wikipedia Library, and GLAM, and (2) focus on community consultations, governance, and training.

Subteams

Produkt

Support and Safety

Technical Collaboration

The Technical Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation helps developers to build features in collaboration with our communities.

Subteams

Community Liaisons

Developer Relations

Office of the Executive Director

The Office of the Executive Director includes the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director and their immediate support staff.

Office of the Executive Director teams

Leadership

Finance and Administration

The Finance and Administration department ensures responsible management of Wikimedia Foundation funds and resources, in keeping with our core values of transparency and accountability.

Finance and Administration teams

Administration

Finanzbranche

Office IT

Legal

The Legal department oversees all legal matters for the Wikimedia Foundation and facilitates initiatives designed to support and grow the Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia projects. The department's work includes policy drafting, trademark law, copyright law, international law, employment law, litigation, fundraising and grant law, domestic and international contracts, privacy law, ethics, internet law, and non-profit corporate governance.

The department is also tasked with carrying forward the Foundation’s goals of advocating for the free knowledge movement, including fighting for content online, facilitating community discussions about critical Wikimedia Foundation policies, building and overseeing good governance where appropriate, and working to improve legal and legislative policy to aid the dissemination and use of free knowledge.

Legal teams

Counsel

Legal interns and fellows

The Legal department runs a legal internship program to educate and train promising law students or recent law school graduates in the areas of Internet law and free knowledge organizations.

Talent and Culture

The Talent and Culture department recruits and supports skilled, passionate people to advance the Wikimedia vision.

Technologie

The Technology department builds, improves and maintains the infrastructure of Wikimedia sites.

Technology teams

Analytics Engineering

Cloud Services

Fundraising Tech

MediaWiki Platform

Performance & Availability

ORES

Release Engineering

Forschung

Sicherheit

Services

Technical Operations

Past departments

Over the history of the Wikimedia Foundation, there have been modifications to the composition of the staff departments.

Legal and Community Advocacy

In 2015, the Legal and Community Advocacy department was split. The Legal team became its own department, and the Community Advocacy team joined the newly created Community Engagement department.

Produkt

In 2017, the Product department became known as Audiences.

Team Practices and Talent and Culture

In 2016, the Team Practices and Talent and Culture department was split. Talent and Culture remained its own department, and the Team Practices team joined the existing Product department.

See also

• Staff and contractors
• Wikimedia committees
• 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Engineering reorganization FAQ
• June 2017 changes to Wikimedia Foundation Engineering group