ads on the site, so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence. That addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto the project's trademarks.

The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in St. Petersburg, Florida, on June 20, 2003. A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003. In 2005, the foundation was granted section 501(c)(3) status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Code