Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

Fundraising

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This is a general information page on Wikimedia fundraising. If you wish to make a donation, please visit https://donate.wikimedia.org

Who are we?

The Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising team cultivates the resources that propel our movement. We engage millions of people from countries across the globe to support Wikipedia and its sister projects. The overwhelming majority of the Foundation's funding comes from individual readers from all over the world giving an average of $15.

Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation maintain server infrastructure, improve the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia and its sister projects accessible globally to millions of people. The fundraising team is responsible for raising the Wikimedia Foundation's budget through online campaigns. These campaigns have the additional goal to educate all readers about Wikipedia and how our movement works. We are grateful for all the readers, contributors, and donors who make Wikipedia and our other projects a global home for knowledge and discovery. To continue thriving we must constantly innovate, adapting to the changing needs of our readers and new advances in the technology that powers the Wikimedia universe. For additional information, please see the 2021–2022 Fundraising Report.

The Teams

Central

Working across teams and with the Partnerships team

Online Fundraising

  • Sam Patton
    Senior Manager, Fundraising Growth and Innovation

  • Mariana Suijkerbuijk
    Lead Global Audience Strategist

  • Katie Haggard
    Senior Campaign Specialist

  • Danny Bu
    Senior Manager, Global Fundraising Campaigns

  • Peter Coombe
    Lead Developer

  • Emma Hughes
    Senior Frontend Developer

  • Sadok Cervantes
    UX Design Contractor

  • Haley Nordeen
    Banner Specialist

  • Camille de Nes
    Lead Global Campaigns Strategist

  • Noah Israel
    Senior Email Campaign Specialist

  • Laurice Medley
    Email Campaign Specialist

  • Ramón López
    Email Campaign Specialist

Foundations & Major Gifts

  • Caitlin Virtue
    Senior Director of Development

  • Jerry Kim
    Senior Events Projects Manager

  • Jonathan Curiel
    Senior Development Comms Manager

  • Rosie Lewis
    Development Analyst

  • Jayme Simmons
    Development Associate

  • Desiree Bautista Wu
    Major Donor Data Specialist

Fundraising Operations

  • Erica Roden
    Director of Fundraising Operations

  • Kristie Robinson
    Donor Relations Manager

  • Michael Beattie
    Senior Donor Relations Specialist

  • Sandra Hust
    Senior Donor Relations Specialist

  • Leanne Schreibstein
    Fundraising Operations Specialist

  • Kristine Hancock
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Amber Johnson
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Lindsay Wadleigh
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Aldrick Beckford
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Erich Brill
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Salvatore Borriello
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Yamini Lavappa
    Donor Relations Specialist

  • Runjini Murthy
    Senior Fundraising Analyst

  • Thea Skaff
    Lead Operations Program Manager

  • Nora Nichols
    Development Data Associate

  • Evelyn Martin
    Principal Payments Officer

  • Rakhi Kumar
    Payments Specialist

Endowment

See also: Fundraising Technology & Wikimedia Enterprise

Our Goals

A Global Project

Readers around the world show their support for Wikimedia each year. The Wikimedia Foundation receives donations from nearly every country in the world in over 80 currencies, 20 payment methods, and 50 languages. We strive to provide readers worldwide with the best localized donation experience possible by offering preferred local payment methods and high quality messages in local languages.

Testing and Optimization

The online fundraiser is based on constant testing and optimization of different themes, messages, designs and user flows. We aim to educate all Wikipedia readers about our movement, provide a convenient donation process, and minimize the disruption of fundraiser banners on the reader experience. Only a tiny portion of readers donate -- therefore, we must always be improving our methods.

Educating Readers

2012 Editor Video

Another goal of the fundraiser is to educate Wikipedia readers about the Wikimedia movement. We do this through the messages displayed in banners as well as through creative content featuring the Wikimedia community. Over the years, we've run personal appeal messages from community members, featured videos introducing Wikimedia volunteers, and invited readers to join in editing.

Current fundraising activities

GlobalEdit

Operated by Wikimedia Foundation

For the Financial Year 22/23 Q3 and Q4

Note - you might have to log out of your user account for banners to display correctly.

  • Fundraising emails in English (AT,BE,IL,NO,LV,RO,SK,PT,DK,HU,LU,MY) - 22nd of March to 11th of April
  • Fundraising emails in Italy - 15th of March to 5th of April
  • Fundraising emails in Spain - 18th of April to 2nd of May
  • Fundraising emails in India - 2nd to 19th of May
  • Fundraising banners in India - 30th of May to 27th of June
  • Fundraising banners in Brazil and Mexico - 29th of May to 23rd of June
  • Fundraising emails in LatAm (country list to be updated soon) - 14th to 30th of June

Community engagement pages around WMF's international campaigns 2022/23Edit

Swedish fundraising campaign community engagement page

Czech fundraising campaign community engagement page

GermanyEdit

Operated by Wikimedia Deutschland

  • Fundraising testing:
  • Fundraising Banners:

SwitzerlandEdit

Operated by Wikimedia Switzerland

  • Fundraising Banner Testing:
  • Fundraising Banner Fundraising:

Contact Us

Fundraising updates

See the full archive


Articles, videos etc. (here you find relevant articles about Wikimedia fundraising and finance)Edit

Building a secure financial future for Wikipedia by Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Foundation 360 Building the relationships and resources we need to thrive Interview with Megan Hernandez, Advancement Department

The finances of free knowledge Lessons in transparency and impact by Jaime Villagomez

Annual Plan Conversations - Advancement and Finance and Administration Departments watch Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez take questions around the 2021/22 annual plan.

Five reasons Wikipedia needs your support (post supporting the 2021 English banner fundraising campaign) by Pats Pena

7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia by Lisa Seitz Gruwell

2021/2022 Fundraising Report

2022/23 Q2 UpdateEdit

The second quarter of our financial year is always the busiest. During Q2 we ran our annual fundraising campaign in France as well as our English campaign in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

During November, the English community ran a Request for Comment (RfC) on the fundraising banner messages which had a profound impact on our English campaign. Following the close of the RfC, the Wikimedia Foundation set up a co-creation page to seek input from community members on proposed messaging for banners. We posted regular updates on the campaign's performance to this page. In brief, over 450+ banners were tested during this year's campaign, and $24.7M of revenue was raised against an original $30M goal (a shortfall of $5.3 million). During the first few days the new banners resulted in about 70% less revenue than on the corresponding days in the prior year. Additional information on the campaign results are posted here. Next year, the fundraising team will continue to engage with the community on banner messaging. We look forward to building on the process we created this year.

We are also working on a concept to encourage more active community discussions around our international fundraising campaigns, prior to the start of these campaigns.

What did our donors say:

Knowledge should be free and those who can should contribute to ensure it! You founded the modern equivalent of the library of Alexandria IMO, thank you for this and thanks to the army of volunteers who curate it. It makes me proud each year to help with this small donation. All the best to you and this beautiful organization. Donor from Canada

To see Wikipedia in-use amongst my students is so exciting for me. It is the gateway that sets them off to dive deep into the right academic literature they need. Without the gateway that Wikipedia provides, without those overviews of a topic, we would all waste so much more time, frustrated because we had not found the deeper stuff sooner. Donor from New Zealand

I wanted to thank you for your amazing work ! I studied in a STEM field and I owe a big part of my master’s degree to Wikipedia and all the information I found on it. This is the reason why now that I am done with studies, I donate a small amount back to Wikipedia yearly, as a thank you. Donor from France

Major gifts and events

In November, we hosted donor events in New York, New York and San Francisco, California. The audience was current and prospective major donors. The New York event had both an online and an in-person attendance option. Jimmy Wales and Maryana Iskander attended and spoke to guests about our mission and how their support advances the work of our mission. We also asked our current donors to renew their support of our work. We engage with major donors via one-on-one meetings (both in-person and virtually), email and postal mail.  

The Endowment publishes regular updates on their own meta page going forward.

2022/23 Q1 UpdateEdit

We started off the new fiscal year with banner fundraising campaigns in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Israel, Luxembourg, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Spain. For most of these countries this was the first time in several years that we ran a full campaign (meaning we showed 100% traffic banners with 10 impressions for each reader), rather than lower level campaigns. These campaigns were critical to contributing to raising our annual target while also learning a lot of valuable data points such as how our payment systems work and ways we can improve our localisation in future campaigns to better reach readers in different countries. Thank you to those who have provided localization support. If you are interested in collaborating on future campaigns please get in touch with Julia.

Donor quotes:

“Of course I transferred my donation again. In a world dominated by money and power, nothing is more important than independent information. Keep it up, nice to have you here!” The Netherlands

“Utilizo Wikipedia desde hace muchos años y considero que es una gran herramienta de consulta, impensable hace pocas décadas. La utilizo casi a diario y observo, con gratitud, su constante perfeccionamiento y les animo a que sigan en sus investigaciones y trabajos. Siempre buscando y ofreciendo la verdad. Es de justicia que colaboremos en la medida de las posibilidades de cada uno.” - Spain

“Hope with this little donation of mine can help the organization to keep doing its good work. Love you guys and thanks for giving information through your platform. It's really helpful.” - Malaysia

The English fundraising campaign started in Q1 with our email campaign which will continue until late November. We also started testing for the English banner fundraising campaign and conducted weekly tests. More details on when we test and with what traffic rate can be found on the English Wikipedia VP.

In September, we hosted a hybrid donor event with both online and in-person attendance options for current and prospective major donors.  Jimmy Wales and Maryana Iskander met with in-person guests before engaging in a conversation about Wikipedia’s past and future during the online portion of the evening.  These events serve to inspire new major donors, and deepen our relationships with existing major donors while educating both groups about our work.

The Endowment publishes regular updates on their own meta page going forward (these might not be quarterly, the interval is still being determined)

Outlook towards Q2:

As we are heading into our biggest fundraising season of the year, we would like to share information about how we manage the complexities of a global organization that fundraises in many countries. You’ve likely seen in the news there is a certain amount of economic turbulence in the global landscape that is impacting organizations and individuals around the world. While the Foundation raises and spends money in multiple currencies, our goals and budgets are set in USD because we are a US-based non-profit. The recent global currency fluctuations will impact both our spending and fundraising. We will continue to monitor the situation and adapt our approach as we learn more. We feel confident our finance and fundraising teams are in good shape to navigate the changing economic landscape.  Although we are not anticipating significant changes to the budget, the situation may require us to update our plans as we go through the year. We will continue to provide updates and include the community throughout the upcoming Q2 campaign.

We are now in Q2 and will be adding additional banner tests as we prepare for the English campaign.


See also

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