Earned income

From Strategic Planning

"Earned income" is non-profit jargon for business development revenue.

Possible forms of earned income include:

  • Premium subscriptions
  • Selling the product (e.g., Wikipedia in hard-copy form)
  • Co-branding/marketing (e.g., Apple includes a mention of Wikipedia app in an iPhone ad)
  • Selling user data

Most of the Wikimedia Foundation's revenue is from donations, but about 10% is earned income. It comes from mission-friendly business deals. For example, the Foundation gets a small amount of revenue from the books sold by PediaPress. It makes money from the Orange deal (Orange has licensed the Wikimedia trademark to use in its mobile version of Wikipedia).