Talk:Fund drives/2005/Q4 planning/Translations/Fundraising drive letter - en

Over 3.2 million unique visitors used Wikipedia in September of last year. September of this year the figure was nearly 13 million.

The board last meeting decisions were

• starting date dec 1rst (2nd is absolutely okay of course)
• duration : three weeks (not two weeks) (and no particular event should stop it before the end of the three complete weeks)
• no goal amount mentionned.
• ideally, it should cover Q4 and Q1 (so we definitly need more than 160000)

We should balance the fact we set no goal, by making proeminently clear

• how much the budget for Q4 is (ie, a link to current budget, major hardware expenses)
• how much the budget for Q1 is (ie, it should be done as soon as technically possible during the funddrive)
• how much our budget defer to reality (ie, comparision of last fiscal year budget to last fiscal year REAL ins and outs - something inspired of the document you sent me about a week ago)

Last, we must put in people minds a couple of important numbers. Most have no idea how much money we spend overall What we need to make clear are a couple of reference such as

In 2005, our overall budget was "800 000 dollars" (not real number, I did not check) -----> offer links

In 2006, we estimate our budget will be 1 500 000 dollars ----- offer links

We have been discussing this on the french list, a "strong" sentence such as "give 10 dollars and allow 8 people get access to knowledge" (on the model, give 10 dollars to pay 50 vaccines or food for a family during 2 weeks) could be cool.

And will speak more to people than "give us 300 000 dollars please". What we will do with 10 dollars speak more to people than 300 000 dollars.

Ideally, we would need BADLY an estimate a the number of unique visitors per day, or month or whatever. I know this would be a bad estimate, but it would be a good approach. You seem to have such a number while developers say they do not ?

Ant

Where is the 13 million figure from? It sounds low to me. I agree with Anthere that we need to link the budget pages. We can't make it sound like these figures are just made up out of thin air. Angela 07:07, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Nielson/NetRatings. I think almost all of ant's points are now included in the letter. --Daniel Mayer 21:17, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Opps! Those stats are only for the U.S. Now removed from letter and replaced by other stats. --Daniel Mayer 23:45, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Signature

Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Team sounds like Jimbo isn't part of the Wikimedia Team. Any ideas how to resolve this? -- Arne (akl) 20:13, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales and his Wikimedia Team?? --Li-sung 20:17, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

That sounds very possessive. Anthere

I agree and IMHO it's even worse than the current version. How about signing the letter by all or the three well known (Jimbo, Florence, Angela) board members? -- Arne (akl) 13:34, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I second that. Something like Jimbo, Florence, Angela, and the rest of the Wikimedia Team. Solensean ᛁᛉᛁ 18:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

No reaction, I made the change. Solensean ᛁᛉᛁ 14:34, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Pages to link

Here are some pages I think are interesting to link. It might be direct link in the text, direct link at the end of the text, or just giving one link of the type "further information", with a collection of links

Financial

• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/PayPal_donations/2005. Currently, links to donations in august and september. Not sure it should be added. Just an idea.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bank_history/2004 (this link should be added if we do not have 2005, but if it is used, mention of draft should probably be removed...)
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bank_history/2005 (does not exist yet; but should be provided for at least Q1 and Q2 of 2005)
• http://internal.wikimedia.org/wiki/Financial_Statements_FY05 ----> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_Statements_FY05. Must check with Michael if these ones can be published, or when...
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005. Updated. Would be nice if at some point during fundraiser, we could have 2006 Q1-Q2.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q3 (link to last fundraiser. I suppose the page is fully updated).

Technical

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers (summary of our servers)
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers/hardware_orders (recent hardware orders)
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_partners_and_hosts (but badly needs updating... very badly...---->to remind the dev team)

Sentence to fix

I believe we should alter the last sentence (which says Now is the time to maximize your charitable giving for the 2005 tax year and to help empower the world with free knowledge.) by removing the part about the "charitable giving". Giving money to charities is not something we europeans are used to do, and we should only focus the last sentence, and therefore one of the most important, on the principle of free knowlege. Solensean ᛁᛉᛁ 18:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

No reaction, I made the change. Solensean ᛁᛉᛁ 14:35, 3 December 2005 (UTC)