Fundraising
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 $11.
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. For additional information, please see the 2023–2024 Fundraising Report.
Current fundraising activities
Operated by Wikimedia Foundation
For the Financial Year 24/25 Q1/2 2024/25 campaigns Please note that all banner examples can now be found on the respective community collaboration pages found below.
- India (Emails 22nd of July to the 15th of August, Banners 13th of August to the 10th of September). Here is an example email: Email 1, Email 2, Email 3, Email 4
- The Netherlands (Emails 29th of July to the 17th of August, Banners 3rd of September to 1st of October). Here are some example emails: Email 1 en, Email 1 nl, Email 2 en, Email 2 nl, Email 3 en, Email 3 nl, Email 4 en, Email 4 nl
- France (Emails 9th of September to 4th of October, Banners 3rd to 31st of October). Here are some example emails: Email1 fr, Email2 fr, Email 3 fr, Email 4 fr, Email 1 en, Email 2 en, Email 3 en, Email 4 en
- English campaign in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US (Emails September - November, Banners December) - community collaboration information will be added in Q1. Here are some example emails (French Canada send): Email 1, Email 2, Email 3
| Community collaboration pages around WMF's fundraising campaigns 2022/23 |
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Swedish fundraising campaign community engagement page Czech fundraising campaign community engagement page |
| Community collaboration pages around WMF's fundraising campaigns 2024/25 |
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India fundraising campaign community collaboration page Dutch fundraising campaign community collaboration page |
Contact Us
- We have an FAQ for donors and one for community members.
- Please stay in contact with us on the fundraising talk page.
- IRC channel: #wikimedia-fundraisingconnect (publicly logged)
- To report technical software bugs in Phabricator, follow mw:How to report a bug and use the #wikimedia-fundraising project tag.
- For a breakdown of how fundraising tech uses Phabricator, check out this wikitech page.
- For a calendar of all central-notice banners, including fundraising, see CentralNotice/Calendar.
Fundraising updates
See the full archive
Articles, videos etc. (here you find relevant articles about Wikimedia fundraising and finance)
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
2024/25 Q1 Update
We started off the new fiscal year with launching the community collaboration page for our English campaign. Our English campaign runs in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and is our biggest fundraising campaign of the year. On the collaboration page we invite volunteers to work together on banner messaging ideas ahead of the campaign, during our pre-test phase.
This year we attended Wikimania and ran a banner fundraising messaging workshop. We had about 25 participants at the workshop and had a good conversation with them. We heard some new points from the volunteers in the room. Such as the suggestions to:
- Use more visuals in our banners, particularly photos of editors and other examples of “Wikimedians in action.”
- Highlight the work of the community in the banners
- Include a goal thermometer or other specifics on our targets for a given fundraising campaign
- Personalize banner messaging more based on article category, geographic location, etc.
- Encourage editing as a secondary call to action, which we already do on our Thank You page and can probably pull forward into the banner flow for non-donors.
In order to build a long-term sustainable revenue model, we are looking to diversify our fundraising channels. This year, in the U.S., we are launching two new ways for people to give, SMS donations and direct mail. Both channels are common and widespread fundraising methods in the U.S and help us serve different audiences. New formats –like mail– will also allow us to bring broader awareness to our nonprofit mission.
In Q1 we also ran email and banner fundraising campaigns in India and the Netherlands. For both campaigns we created collaboration pages, engaged with volunteers on- and off- wiki and worked together to ensure localized banner fundraising messages. In Q2 we will be publishing our latest fundraising report with insights from the past fiscal year.
You can find all past and current collaboration pages above.
2023/24 Q4 Update
We wrapped up the last fiscal year successfully and are thankful for everyone’s contribution and engagement. You will find more information on how the year went in our forthcoming fundraising report.
During Q4 we ran banner fundraising campaigns in a wide range of countries and created community collaboration pages for each of the campaigns. You can find all the collaboration pages above. Additionally we hosted community calls and engaged with our communities on talk pages to hear their feedback and work with them on banner messaging.
Spotlight Japan:
We worked with the Japanese community on refining our banner message in Japan and were able to adopt a new message which was based on community conversations.
We also used Q4 to prepare for our new financial year starting in July. We launched collaboration with the Indian communities around the upcoming India campaign and engaged with community members on the talk page. We also kicked off our collaboration with the English community around our English fundraising campaign. With pre-tests that started from mid-July, we want to collaborate now to ensure feedback and suggestions are heard and to improve the campaign this year.
See also
- Erik Moeller and Domas Mituzas on fundraising since 2010