Wow!  We’ve just closed the most successful fundraiser in the history of the Wikimedia Foundation thanks to our  amazing donors. Over 230,000 people came together and showed their support for our project and mission: to provide free and open knowledge to everyone around the world. Thank you!

Again, we’re ending our annual fundraiser early due to the overwhelming and rapid support from everyone.   We’ve hit and surpassed our fundraising goal of $7.5 million, raising over $8 million in just two months.

Even more, we’re humbled by the fact that during serious global economic stress, folks were still willing to help out and contribute.  More than 230,000 donors have shown that they want Wikipedia to continue to be a place for free and open information.  More than 230,000 have joined together to keep Wikipedia free of ads.  We are extremely grateful for your generosity.

I cannot say enough about how amazing the steadfast support from everyone has been: our donors, our contributors, our chapters; everyone involved directly influenced the immense success of this year’s effort. Again, a huge thank you from me and everyone from the Wikimedia Foundation.  We look forward to sharing some more detailed findings about this year’s fundraiser in the coming weeks.

Happy New Year,

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

Hey All–

First and foremost, a big thank you to all our donors, community, and supporters for all the time & money given to this Annual Fundraiser.  The Wikimedia Foundation would not exist without the support and goodwill of our community.

We have some more statistics and information to share with everyone about the great success of this year’s fundraiser.

As you all can see, our progress this year has been pretty darn good.   Our “Jimmy Appeal” is working quite well, making $430,000 on its first full day up, and another $345,000 on the second.  This picture (from WMF techie Trevor Parscal) probably shows it best:  http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:FundraiserStatistics-Blog.jpg.    I hope to discuss that in a future blog post.

Secondly, a long awaited link: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionTrackingStatistics.  This is part of the data that we use to evaluate site notice performance.  You will see the number of donations, total donations, and largest gifts for our different site notices for each day.  Eventually, we would like to put out all the data for all fundraising dates; however, due to processing limitations, we can only have one week of data available.

Landing pages names Support, Support2, and Appeal2 are different types of pre-payment pages.  Sometimes we test different versions to compare results.   For the current Jimmy Appeal, most donors are randomly shunted to either (Appeal ==> Support2) or (Appeal2). We are comparing those results for future campaigns.  In the past, we also tested 5Facts and Change the World landing pages.   PP = donations made via Paypal and CC = credit card payment through our new credit card gateway.   You can also sort by column by clicking on the sort arrows.

Thirdly, I think I need to admit that I’ll never have a perfect understanding of how well any particular site notice will do.  I can suspect that certain ones will do well, or certain ones will fail, but I’m constantly reminded that the donation data from our users never quite aligns with what I expect.

For instance, we developed a banner based on this donor quote:

“I couldn’t ignore that banner at the top of the site anymore… I use Wikipedia far too often to ignore the need!”

To me, it’s too long and a bit awkwardly phrased.  I did not think it would hold up well to sweet, simple, short phrases we’ve tried in the past.   I do acknowledge that it has some humor and poignancy behind it.

The results?

2009_Notice42 did incredibly well.  “Crushing all in it’s path” (this is before the onset of the Jimmy Appeal) would be more accurate, but the message is drawing in a number of donors.  Running at 20% of English page views with 5 other banners in rotation, the results are glaring:

Now, why do you think it’s working so well?   Is it a combination of previous messages?  What other messages do you think would work well?

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Hey All–

We’ve been tracking a huge amount of data during this year’s fundraiser so we can better understand which messages work well and which don’t.  We have two sets of banners that we set each day to run on all Wikipedia languages.  Set one is the English version; set two is all non-English versions.

We have two sets because we want our banners to run globally only if they are translated…which can take some time and volunteer effort.  This is why our non-English banners rotate slowly.  However, with English banners, we can build a banner quickly and put it up to see how it does.

Let’s go into some detail on selecting a rotation.  On December 3rd, our rotation and results (pp = Paypal, cc = credit card):

As you can see, we had three different notices running at 20% and one banner, taken from one of the better notices from 2008′s fundraiser, 2009_Notice30_bold running at 40%.  It did well throughout last week.

As you can see, 2009_Notice18 pulled in a huge number of gifts despite only showing 20% of the time.   Also, it had a significantly lower average gift…probably as a result of the message itself.   Despite the low average gift, people seemed to really respond to the message…and donated lots.

We are wary of banner-fatigue and saturation, where users might be tired of seeing the same message, so we changed banners around for the next day.

Looking at December 4th, 2009:

We introduced 2009_Notice40 (“Thanks, Wikipedia.”) to the mix and cut back on another.   All five banners in rotation are at 20%.  Two of the banners are greatly outperforming the others.  We like what #40 is doing…but #18 is still rocking…1001 donations while the next closest is 507 donations (#40).

Again, we switched things up, removing #17, and adding 2009_Notice22, a similar, but opposite message to #18, which has been successful.

December 5th, 2009:

This day is a fascinating look at our banners and our user population.  Notice the results of #18 and #22…they are similar yet contrasting messages.   #18 is an quote from a small dollar donation (USD 1.95), acknowledging the sincerity of the gift.  #22 is a quote from a high dollar donation (USD 200),  emphasizing that a big gift is a small matter.

Compare the numbers of gifts for the two banners:

#18: 832 gifts, $15073.47 total
#22: 301 gifts, $9572.83 total

Not close right?  But look at the average gift sizes:

#18:  $15.84 for Paypal, $21.87 for credit card
#22:  $27.92 for Paypal, $36.58 for credit card

That’s quite a difference.  What was it about the message that would account for that?  Is it possible that our more affluent donors were more interested in #22, while other donors were affected by #18?

Post your thoughts below.

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation

Hey All–

This is my first post regarding 2009 Annual Fundraiser.  It’s been an interesting first three weeks — we’ve had some real success, and we’ve learned what was less successful.  With a huge goal this year, we were very ambitious with our plans:

1) Host our own credit card payment processing.  We felt that many of our donors preferred to use credit cards directly, rather than being shuttled off-site, to donate.
2) Create a new look and feel that more closely resembled the Wiki user experience.  We wanted our donors to feel comfortable giving in a familiar environment.
3) Work with outside marketing/communications support from Fenton Communications and SeaChange Strategies on our messaging, design, and strategy.
4) Allow our chapters to fundraise more successfully in their countries.  For that we introduced a GEO IP location system allowing some donors to see chapter specific donation pages.
5) An aggressive matching gift program to encourage higher value gifts.  Omidyar Network offered to match gifts from $100 to $10,000 this year, up to $500,000.
6) Numerous smaller improvements, like mobile giving, social media outreach, and various cool stuff to come.

Thankfully, all those systems are working well (but not perfectly).  As I write this, we have had a successful run (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics) over the last two weeks.  The blue lines are the 2007 totals, the green are the 2008 totals, and the orange are 2009 totals by day of the fundraiser.  Hold your mouse over any bar to see the exact dates, number of donors, and donation totals for each day.

Much like last year, we continue to test many different elements to find ways to appeal to our donors.  During the fundraiser, we will be (and have been) testing the following elements:

• Site Notice messaging (Personal Appeal vs. Slogans vs. Emotional vs. Statistical etc.)
• Site Notice text, bolding, font size, placement.
• Thermometer vs. No Thermometer
• Donate Button vs. No Donate Button
• Landing Pages
• Ask Strings
• Personal Appeals
• And much more.

Each test takes time and technical effort to implement and track and we will attempt to provide detail into those tests as we can.

We largely finished our testing of ask strings on our landing pages.

This landing page has an ask string starting with $35 and going up to $100.
This one has an ask string starting with $250 and going down to $35.

We tested these compared these significantly during the first few weeks.  We noticed that the page with the larger ask string had about a $1 higher average donation with about the same number of transactions.

I hope to be able to share more of our findings about our other landing pages (Change the World and 5 Facts) and site notices (Wikipedia Needs You, Wikipedia Forever, & others) later in the month.

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving
Wikimedia Foundation

How would you make this button better?

We have begun exploring ideas for enhancing the visibility of a donate button, not only within Wikipedia and the Wikimedia main template, but also on every page of every Wikimedia project. We hope that enhancement will enable us to better informing our public that we are dependent on their donations as we promote the free and open knowledge movement.

As we saw in the last fundraiser, different messages and visual styles had different outcomes: different levels of gifts, origin of donors, and frequency of donations.  We expect that a small change to the Wikimedia design template will result in a big returns in donations — increasing funds we use to keep the Wikimedia movement alive and growing.  We expect that in return for a bit of enhanced visibility, we will see a daily increase of up to 20% in donations.

Working with the same designer that worked on last year’s donation page, we have culled his 30+ button ideas into 6 that represent some of the better designs.

We have posted several design options for your comments and input.

Design is only half of this change… words are equally important.   We are also looking for input on messaging on the donate button and on most Wikimedia articles.  What are the simplest words we can use? Can the text be easily translated into dozens of languages? We need text that will communicate that we are a non-profit and and express the importance of donations in keeping our projects active.

Join the discussions on our donation upgrades page and catch a glimpse of the upcoming improvements to our community fundraising efforts!

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

Wow.

It’s been a nice few weeks in fundraising for Wikimedia Foundation.  Our users have demonstrated overwhelming support for our projects and our mission.

We’ve more than passed our initial fundraising goal of $6 million (though you are still encouraged to make a donation…bolstering our reserves in preparation for the years ahead is always welcome) with over 130,000 people making a statement for open and free information.

I love being able to say that.  Thank our donors again for their support.

That said, we’ll be taking down the site notices/banners today at 4pm PST.  We’ll be sending out some news next week (approaching the 8th anniversary of Wikipedia) with some new geographic breakdown data about giving.

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving<

There is just no doubt in my mind that Jimmy’s Appeal letter has been the cause of our wonderful, incredible fundraising bump over the last 7 days.  None of us here predicted  such a wonderful response…but when you think about it, it really makes sense.

A few blog posts back, we proved that people do read our site notices…our messages matter.  So is it so hard to imagine these results?

Fundraiser Snapshot 122908

Yeah… I guess it might be hard to imagine.   Those LONG green lines are the donation totals for Jimmy’s Appeal.  It’s roughly 8 times what we had been raising on a daily basis previous to the appeal.

Date    # Donors    $USD
12/23/08    8,192     $283,994.98

12/24/08    6,823     $229,293.59

12/25/08    5,139     $169,109.73

12/26/08    5,995     $213,963.27

12/27/08    5,791     $200,988.24

12/28/08    5,627     $196,524.30

12/29/08    5,850     $207,349.76

Compare those results to the recent weeks (when we were averaging about $30,000 per day), the biggest change is running the Jimmy Appeal at 50% of the time.

Site Notice Frequency 12/20/08 to 12/22/08:

There Need it Meter: 25%
Rely on donations Meter: 25%
Wikipedia is a Non Profit: 25%
Various Quotes:  25%

And from 12/23 to present:

Jimmy Appeal Red Border:  25%
Jimmy Appeal Grey Border:  25%
There Need it Meter: 10%
Rely on donations Meter: 10%
Wikipedia is a Non Profit: 10%
Various Quotes:  20%

Incidentally, how did the grey bordered vs. red bordered vs. quotes and other site notices do?

# donations        sum           average
red border            13,372      $441,163.75     $32.99       25%
grey border          12,215       $419,911.63     $34.38       25%
quotes                     1,560        $59,445.81     $37.69       20%
Helped Meter           963        $35,814.23     $37.19       10%
Need it Meter           927        $32,502.97     $35.06      10%
NonProfit Meter      867        $38,412.25     $44.30      10%

Nope… no doubt.   The Jimmy Appeal was a huge push.

The Appeal really hit the right notes for our community:  direct and honest.  It was straight to the point and forceful.  And it helped our donors understand why we needed the money and what we were going to do with it.

As I write this, we’re at approximately $5,500,000.00 and still going strong toward our $6 million goal.   That’s with over 100,000 donors (many of them new donors) averaging over $30.00 per donation.   That speaks very well for the depth of our donor pool and the future.

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

<

Do people read site notices?

Yes.  Absolutely.  Our users respond to different messages… and we continue to test what messages resonate and drive donations.   Reflect back to my previous post and you’ll see that site notices with the thermometer had much higher click through rates than those without.

We decided that we wanted to test the impact of the meters over a few days (generating several million page views) to see how different notices performed with and without thermometers.  Phase 1a, below, we went down to 3 notices in random cycling.  One had a meter, the other two did not.

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In Phase 1b, we completely reversed the placements of the thermometer from our initial run.  As expected, those with meters had significantly higher clicks and donations.

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Now, over the last few days, we’ve gone with all meters on all notices.  Not only has there been a nice spike in donations, but it seems that people are reading the messages.  In particular, the educational notice, “Wikipedia is a non-profit project” has done significantly better from our initial run.

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We’re now going to focus on improving our conversion rate:  fewer and fewer people are donating after a click-through.  It’s expected as the fundraiser goes on, but we need to find a better way to get people to donate once they’ve shown interest.

Our next steps include testing a new “Learn More” link on all the notices (maybe people need more information before they give) and other Phase 2 notices.   We’re also going to test some different looks and images in an attempt to draw in new and different donors.

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving<

Admittedly, this is a year of growth and testing for the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising team. We have 4 new members and the Annual Fundraiser is a new experience for all of us. In fact, I’m not sure how many fundraising projects have had this kind of reach (250+ million unique viewers in November).  This provides us with an amazing opportunity to test different pitches through our site notices. With the fundraiser reaching a huge audience, we knew we had a great chance to test different messages and see what works and what doesn’t.

We started the Annual Fundraiser on November 3rd with 4 site notices (the big banners across the top of every Wiki article). Our tech team worked to track each notice and each notice had a randomized 25% chance of displaying on any given article (on every Wikipedia, in localized languages, and in other other Wikimedia projects). In theory, every notice had the same number of views. You can see the 4 site notices here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_drafts.

Now, which notices do you think did the best? The results are surprising:

People love to click on the links with the thermometer…but less than 10% donated after clicking-though. However, it’s interesting to see the strength of the “Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you” message. While it had significantly less clicks, nearly 17% of people donated after clicking on it.

What do you make of that? What other conclusions would you draw?

And what do you think our next test should be?

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving<

Today, we are 11 days into the 2008 Annual Giving Campaign…it’s been quite an exciting experience. You’ve probably seen the site notices up on just about every Wiki-project page and almost every language. Our volunteers and tech team have worked overtime to get everything working. We’ve had an amazing response from the community (This page still stuns me and I spend far too much time refreshing it).

After 11 days last year, we had 10,599 donors who gave $289,091.08 in total.

After 11 days this year, we have 22,736 donors who have given $629,825.92 in total.

Those are some nice numbers and we’ll be working to make sure that they continue. But to see that type of progress reminds me of one of the things I’ve heard more often than anything else related to my work at Wikimedia was/is: “What? Wikipedia is a non-profit?”

People don’t seem to know yet how dependent the Wikimedia Foundation is on the goodwill of our community. This year, community gifts (donations of less than $10,000) are expected to make up nearly half of our $6 million budget. Part of our strategy this year is to emphasize our charitable status and make a case to our users that they can help us maintain and promote the free knowledge movement.

And, to date, they have. And that’s pretty exciting.

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving