[Foundation-l] fundraiser suggestion

[Christophe Henner]

Hi,

Happy new year everyone :)

I'm not gonna answer all the points raised in this threads as I don't
have all the elements (I didn't enjoy the animated banner for
example).

But I'd like to comment two points :
I/ The urgency to raise at the end of the fundraising. While I do
agree it could be misleading to say "We need your money now" as we've
already covered the operating costs, you have to keep in mind two
facts :
1) the week before the end of the year is the week in the year people
to give the more money due to tax-deductions. It is normal (for me at
least) to remind them that this is the last days they could give. Most
of the NGO I give to sent me an email late December. It is urgent, for
me, to give otherwise I won't benefit of the tax deductions.
2) Not only Wikimedia Foundation is raising money. All the chapters
are. We can debate whether chapters do support our missions or not,
but the fact is, in the current state of the movement, they do. And
they too have budget to reach and programs to do. We must keep in mind
that our movement is much bigger and developed than he used to be. And
I do agree with Erik on that, 2010 is key year for the movement as a
whole. Chapters are now the sources of many partnerships and events
that push the movement, and its the mission, forward. I won't make a
list but you just have to look at the different partnerships, mostly
in Europe, about freeing and digitizing content. And as they're
growing and getting professionalized, they're doing more and more
useful (imo) things. So, from my point of view, yes 2010 was a key
year for the movement.

II/ The distinction between Wikimedia and Wikipedia
There are means of fundraising that are making sense to me (the urgent
thing) but there are also some that doesn't make sens and are, in
fact, undermining the work of dozens persons for month.
In France, as everywhere else I'm sure, we've been fighting with the
journalists so they would understand what Wikimedia Foundation is. It
costs us a lot of time and money. For now 3 years we've been actively
correcting most of the journalists making that very mistake. And it's
paying off. Few days ago, I saw articles published saying "Wikimedia
Foundation raised X millions $" on french news website, and during the
fundraising many journalists explained that Wikipedia was raising
money through Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation supporting
Wikipedia. Yes there was a press release, but few month ago even with
a press release, journalists were making the mistake... they don't
anymore.
They're still way to improve the awareness of what Wikimedia is, what
our movement is doing etc. But I do agree that saying "Wikipedia ED"
instead of "Wikimedia ED" is, on the long run, counter productive. Yes
we might lose some donations in doing so, but we mislead readers and
journalists. How can we justify to "harass" them to correct the
Wikipedia/Wikimedia mistake when we do the very same thing during our
fundraising. The only way we're changing this is in being stubborn
(and I'm french so I know of stubbornness) and in keeping on
correcting them. This is the only we can have the larger audience to
understand the difference between Wikipedia and Wikimedia.

I do understand why the fundraising team did so, but imo, this is not
the way to go. It's easiest, more effective for this very fundraising,
but we're not helping ourselves by doing so.

I'd like to say few more words regarding this fundraising. It clearly
is the most efficient we ever had.
It also is the first one, since professionalization of the
fundraising, volunteers were actually part of it and could get
involved (there's way to improve the involvement of volunteers, but
it's the way to go).
It's also the first one with a strong will to have a rational /
professional approach (though, again, there's way for improvement (A/B
testing for one)).

So, to balance this thread, I do think we, globally, are on the right path.

There was mistakes made. No questions there. But hey we, wikimedians,
should understand more than an anyone that it's through little steps
and mistakes that we can improve fundraising.
So I hope when the fundraising team will wrap-up they'll succeed in
being critical with themselves (and that's not easy). That they'll
read all of those, and the many to come, emails and take the best of
it so next year they'll fix those mistakes... and make new ones :)

All the best

Christophe