The fundraising drive for this quarter will be held later this month, possibly to coincide with "Wikipedia Day" (January 21) as Daniel proposed last month.
Before this launches, it would be nice to have some more responses to the questions I put at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_drive and also additions of any other fundraising ideas at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas
The way the site notice is used could be improved before the next drive. The message used was very bland and could be made more motivational. This should be decided very soon to allow time for translations to occur before the drive starts. Will it be possible to have a real-time display of donations during the drive? Are any developers willing to work on this before mid-January?
How the drive is going to be advertised besides the site notices needs to be considered. Will it be possible to combine this with a press release? Perhaps something about the fourth anniversary of Wikipedia?
We hope to have a system of membership set up by this date so that, as well as making donations, people can become members of the Foundation, and choose to make regular payments if they wish. Tim Starling is currently working on creating the database we need for this, along with membership options in the user preferences. The budget for this quarter will also be created before the fundraising drive, with details of proposed hardware purchases so donors know where their money is going.
Improvements to the fundraising pages at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising are also welcome. Comments can be made at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_site_feedback since the page is not openly editable.
Angela.