2008/11/10 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>om>:
There is currently a lot of discussion about
Obama's fundraising in
the US that I think we can learn from. According to people involved
in the campaign one factor behind their success was the synergy
between fundraising and man-power: Many people who donated were
drafted into the the Obama grass roots campaign and sent out knocking
on doors, registering voters, feet on the street. Given materials on
strategy and talking points to convince people to vote for Obama (and
convince them to donate). Simultaneously there was this enormous group
of time contributors who could be counted on as a continual source of
donations.
I think we're largely lacking this kind of synergy between labor
contributors and financial contributors at Wikipedia: Many content
contributors are merely tolerant of the fundraising rather than seeing
themselves as components in its success. Potentially a big area for
improvement.
Interesting and useful idea.
I don't have money to spare. (Arkady's teenage daughters moved in with
us last week. Yay, Brady Bunch!) So I contribute my time - probably an
hour or two a day on nuts and bolts stuff for Wikimedia, since I do
pitiably little editing these days (and should really do more).
I think in terms of my time and chunks of my soul being my
contribution. Of course, I get back those chunks of soul with
interest, so that's just fine.
Now you need to work out how to convince me to donate acutal cash and
get others to donate actual cash ;-)
- d.