2010 Contribution Campaign launched

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Today, I’m pleased to announce the launch of our 2010 annual fundraising drive, which we are referring to as a “contribution campaign”. This year marks a major milestone for Wikipedia.  Ten years of revolutionizing access to knowledge.  Ten years of our joint commitment to deliver the sum of human knowledge to every human being on the planet.  For free.
Wikipedia and its sister sites champion a mission of effectively disseminating knowledge, free for use, free of copyright, and free of external advertising. Since its founding in 2001, the site has grown to 17 million articles in over 270 languages, and for many of those languages, Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia ever written. Wikipedia, and all the Wikimedia projects, are always there when we need them; for students, educators, professionals and curious minds worldwide, these projects are simply the most convenient and readily accessible sources of information.
This year’s fundraising goal is an ambitious one – $16 million over two months. Wikimedia sites are the 5th most visited web properties worldwide (visited by about 400 million people each month), and Wikimedia is the only non-profit organization in the top 10. Since 2007 our readership has doubled, with this past September seeing our highest traffic yet.  With this incredible feat comes an enormous duty: to maintain the infrastructure necessary to keep these sites free, stable, and running smoothly, while also continually improving the systems and architecture behind them.
For more information about where your donations go, see this year’s annual plan.
Since the beginning, our fundraising model has been based on the support of our community of readers and editors – we have received more than 500,000 donations in the lifetime of the Foundation, averaging about $33 each.  Will you join us today by making a donation to financially underwrite Wikipedia and its sister sites?

We have worked with almost a thousand community volunteers to develop this year’s fundraiser as a community driven contribution campaign. These exceptional volunteers have helped to develop messaging, design banners, write appeals, and conduct tests of our ideas.
Since August we have been testing these messages and tweaking our campaign to reflect the data and feedback from our community. Due to the introduction of new technology, we now have the ability to target particular banners and donation pages based upon geographic location, and to optimize the pages donors see.
In addition to new technology, we’re introducing a new perspective;  this year’s contribution campaign is designed to invite not only financial contributions, but to also encourage people to contribute their expertise and knowledge to the projects. We want readers to make their first edit, upload their first photograph to Wikimedia Commons, write their first article, and through this, to become more deeply affiliated with the projects.
For updates throughout the fundraiser continue to check our blog, and follow us on identi.ca and Twitter (as @Wikipedia, or the community-run contribution handle @WikiContribute).  After you’ve made a contribution, please tell the world using the hashtag #keepitfree!
This year marks a significant milestone for us, so I hope you will join me – and the diverse community of volunteers that make up the Wikimedia projects – in celebrating and supporting the mission that has brought us all together.
Stay curious!
Philippe Beaudette,
Community Department

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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[…] This year’s fundraising goal is an ambitious one – $16 million over two month2010 Contribution Campaign launched […]

[…] uploaden, hun eerste tekst schrijven en daardoor meer bij het project betrokken raken”, schrijft Philippe Beaudette van het Community Departement van […]

So what you’re saying is that 400mm people use WIKIPEDIA, you are a registered charity, and your whole operation runs on literally 2 handfuls of people (<10) I'm confused as to why you need money. If each user donated just $10 (almost nothing to anybody) what would you use the $4,000,000,000 (FOUR BILLION DOLLARS)for? Last time I checked, Canadian based company TIM HORTONS was worth just $6,800,000,000 (SIX BILLION, EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS) and they have over 3,000 (THREE THOUSAND) stores and a list of assets the length of 2 straight trucks. Also, last time I checked, WIKIPEDIA had nearly… Read more »

Our operation employs just over 50 employees, actually, who are in service to a very active population of volunteer editors around the world – roughly 100,000 active volunteers. Our campaign goal is to raise $16 million USD. Although raising over $4 billion might be a wonderful windfall for free knowledge, and establish possibly an eternal legacy for the project, this is not our aim. The operating budget for Wikimedia Foundation is just over $20 million USD for the current fiscal year, a large portion of which will fund the technology operations of our site, supporting infrastructure and meeting the escalating… Read more »

If I donate, will Jimbo shave?

DISCLAIMER: I don’t know any of these people personally, I do volunteer when I have time, but mainly I’m just a huge user of the Wikimedia Suite. Information is power. And the Wikimedia Foudation is Power to the People, by the People. Hey Jay! I looked at the financials and don’t know how you guys do it! If you totaled up the $3.5 M in Total Salaries & Wages and divided that by 50 employees — you guys make an average of $70,000 a year — in San Francisco? For the 5th most popular site in the world? The site… Read more »

[…] collected over $8 million. This year, though, the organization aims to double that amount and raise $16 million. Ten-year-old Wikipedia is now the 12th most popular site in the U.S., and the fifth most heavily […]

[…] la enciclopedia, señaló que sus gastos anuales alcanzan los 20,4 millones de dólares, y necesita unos 16 millones para completar esa […]

Want to donate, could not figure out how to!!

[…] than $8 million in its yearly fundraiser. On Monday morning, the non-profit behindWikipedia is announcing that it aims to raise $16 million this year “so that Wikipedia and its sister projects can […]

I mis the page where people could make a comment after making the donation.
I think this helped triggering making a donation.
Thanks for all the good work…

Cannot believe it has been 10 years already. This is my 2nd year being involved with Wikipedia during a time when the site was collecting contributions in order to continue ad free, problem free, copyright free and FOR FREE……plus including all of the sister sites that so many of us rely on. Visitors and members of Wikipedia need to also remember that if this is a time when the site has seen double the action ever since 2007 as well as more visitors than ever before in the month of September alone, then there is a huge chance that it… Read more »

Is it just me, or does the point of not taking advertising get lost when I go to a page and have a big picture of Jimmy Wales staring at me! Just take some ads and be done with it! It will improve the service which is what people really want!
JMTC
Molly