wikiHow:Hybrid Organization

wikiHow is a hybrid organization; a for-profit company focused on creating a global public good in accordance with our mission. In short, wikiHow is run as a community service first and a business second.

What is a Hybrid Organization?

Traditionally there have been 3 typical organization entities which could be dramatically over simplified as follows:

• Businesses - Directed to make as much money as possible, any legal way possible.
• Non-profits - Directed to follow their missions to help people as much as incoming donations allow.
• Government - Directed to create public goods with tax revenue and regulate businesses to prevent profiteering run amok and harming people.

wikiHow is an attempt to build a 4th organizational structure, one might call a hybrid organization. It combines the best elements of the 3 other structures:

• Like a non-profit, wikiHow focuses on fulfilling its mission to help people.
• Like a government, wikiHow is building a public good like a library or a park that can be enjoyed freely by all.
• Like a business, it uses profits to finance its operations, expansion and assure stability for the project.

If wikiHow succeeds at creating a significantly sized, profitable hybrid company, we hope we can serve as a role model for other entrepreneurs and businesses to follow. The world would be a better place if more organizations succeeded at creating thriving public goods and we hope to create a successful example here.

Advantages of Being a Hybrid Organization

Frequently people ask why wikiHow is not a non-profit. There are several advantages to the for-profit hybrid organization structure to that of a non-profit.

• wikiHow doesn't ever have to ask for donations from our readers and contributors to keep the site going. In addition to not annoying our community with donation requests, we also free up donation resources for the Wikimedia Foundation and other similarly minded non-profits that require donations.
• Financial stability guarantees the project's survival. wikiHow is not subject to the whims of a bad fund raising climate. We will always be here.
• Freedom from funding constraints, changes in the tax code, and interference from large donors.
• Ability to plow profits back into the site. wikiHow's profits are used to finance engineering expenses, site redesign costs, back office administration, and other projects which could not easily be accomplished through volunteers alone.
• Ability to finance community meetups. Every year wikiHow financially sponsors wikiHowians to travel to one location and meet face to face. Such meetings strengthen our community and increase our ability to collaborate.
• Profit for wikiHow's founder and steward, Jack Herrick. While some may wish that Jack received no financial compensation for wikiHow, profitability assures that Jack will remain as wikiHow's steward and will be financially as well as emotionally motivated to help wikiHow accomplish its mission.
• Ability to donate to charities and non-profits. To date wikiHow has donated over $60,000 to several charities.
• Ability to serve as a role model. If wikiHow succeeds at becoming a significantly sized profitable company, it will influence other businesses and entrepreneurs to follow our lead. More hybrid organizations would be good for the world.

Are other open source projects for-profit?

Some, most notably Wikipedia, have chosen to build non-profit businesses. However, there are several other for-profit companies that do try to obtain profitability with a social goal or mission in mind.

Some examples of the for-profit ventures include:

• Wikia - the pro-profit wiki site founded by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.
• WikiTravel.org - a very successful wiki that is attempting to build the world's largest travel guide.
• Firefox – the open source browser has a very profitable commercial operation and a non-profit foundation simultaneously.
• RedHat Linux – one of the most popular Linux distributors.
• MySQL – the creators of the open source databases that wikiHow and Wikipedia run on.
• Craigslist.org - the mostly free online classifieds company which has served to build many online and offline communities.
• Newman’s Organics – Paul Newman’s organic food company which dedicates a large percentage of profits to charities.

How does wikiHow make money?

wikiHow shows clearly marked advertising only to non-registered visitors.

In fact, wikiHow is one of the few "advertising optional" websites on the Internet. If you do not wish to see advertising here, simply register an account and login or just click the "hide ads" button near our ad units. Read why we let readers hide ads for more information.

What if the profit incentive runs amok?

wikiHow is run as a community service first and a business second. All "business decisions" are made with the realization the mission comes before profit concerns.

However, even conspiracy theorists can be reassured that if Jack were to somehow turn to the dark side, the wikiHow community has the right to fork and operate it without him. All the content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons and all the software is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Anyone is free to create a non-profit organization, move all the content and software to another domain and continue building wikiHow without him. So if Jack doesn't act with the community's best interests in mind, the community can cut him out of the picture. (Jack hopes you don't though - he loves his role at wikiHow.)

Who owns wikiHow?

wikiHow's content is "owned by everyone" since it is Creative Commons licensed meaning that anyone can use and redistribute it for any non-commercial purposes. This is different than almost any other media company where the owners control the copyright and only they are allowed to distribute or use the content. In addition, all the software is open-source, freely licensed under the GPL, and available to download.

Jack owns the servers, the domain name, trademarks, and some office supplies and furniture. That said, as mentioned above, anyone has the right to "fork" wikiHow and move all the content and software to new servers and domain, so in some sense Jack owns almost nothing. Basically, Jack is the steward of the wikiHow community - as long as the community believes he is the best steward possible and acts in the interest of the community and the wikiHow mission.