[WikiEN-l] Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)

[Liam Wyatt]

On 18/11/2010, at 7:14, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Deniz Gultekin <dgultekin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> MuZemike,
>> 
>> Bad feelings? We're learning more about our donors to maximize the
>> fundraising potential of our messages during the two month campaign. We
>> have a lofty goal - and a short time period to accomplish it in.
> 
> At an intellectual level, I agree with the premise that if an
> organisation like WMF wants to raise money through banner ads, and
> wants to raise *a lot* of money, it makes sense to engineer that
> process: experimenting, collecting data, refining the message,
> implementing improvements.
> 
> But at a gut reaction level, I find this process distasteful. I don't
> know why, exactly. There's this feeling of treating the people who
> support WMF as lab rats, working out which experimental conditions are
> ideal for extracting maximum dollar per eyeball. And the inherent
> irony in an idea like "donors respond well to authenticity, so we
> carefully concocted a message full of maximum authenticity..."
> 
> It's something like intellectually being ok with eating meat, but not
> wanting to observe the process of butchery.
> 
> Just posting to back anyone else up who feels a bit uncomfortable with
> seeing this kind of report, and the thinking implied behind it.
> 
> Steve
> 
I see what you mean/where you're coming from but I would like to raise something to contest your saying that it is about "extracting maximum dollars per eyeball".
Have a looks at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics
And specifically the tabs for "number of donors" and "average donation" (the current year are they dark red lines). You will see that this year is vastly more successful in terms of number of people participating in the fundraiser - and in this sense it could be seen as either successful or exploitative depending on one's point of view. However, you can also see the that average amount being donated per person is either stable or has actually decreased relative to previous years. This is not by chance and is a fundraising campaign design decision to try to maximize participation in the fundraiser and not merely get as much money as possible. I think this is a very interesting statistic as it validates the decision of the WMF to move away from looking to attract major donors - it ultimately means the wikimedia movement is more accountable to individual donors who give at the level of $20 than the rich few. This is "carefully concocted", as you rightly say, but done so in a way that is true to ourselves IMO.


-Liam
Wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata