Those of you checking Meta may have noticed that there are a few designs uploaded for feedback from translators:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_drafts http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/benefactors
With the exception of the usual copyrights and trademarks on Wikimedia logos & marks, these designs are CC-BY-SA. They are still prototypes that we are hoping to implement using the existing skin/translation system on wikimediafoundation.org.
Translation has also begun on the key messages of the campaign -- thanks to everyone who is helping. Rand Montoya is managing the fundraiser this year, and will post more detailed updates as things progress. Please do feel free to add first feedback to the above pages.
We're currently planning to launch the fundraiser in early November, and it will run until late January. The "Ask" of the fundraiser will be a campaign goal of $6M, which matches the budgeted expenses for the current fiscal year. It does not include the budgeted contingency, which we hope to meet through other revenue streams (e.g. business development). We will count gifts received or committed in this fiscal year prior to the launch of the fundraiser as "leadership gifts". That means that the fundraising thermometer will literally be filled up (at current count by about $2M), and we hope to raise the remaining difference.
We will also count any major gifts received during the fundraising period against the thermometer. So, for campaign purposes, we will not distinguish between small gifts and major gifts. We may special case any significantly restricted grants received during the time period, depending on the nature of the grant.
Some of the other important changes this year:
* The fundraiser is supported by our brand-spanking new open source donation database, CiviCRM. We are also setting up the CiviMail component to auto-confirm donations with an e-mail "Thank you" and to email past and future donors. * We have developed a fundraising agreement for chapters, which commits us to mutual reporting obligations and commits chapters to invest 50% of revenue from the online fundraiser in activities agreed upon with WMF (e.g. hiring a developer, buying a server, obtaining a legal study, sending us money). * We are implementing a new version of the CentralNotice campaign management system that supports scheduling & use of different banners. We are also hoping to have tracking of where donors are coming from in place (possibly not quite at launch) to do proper A/B testing on a number of designs. * As you can see on the above link, we'll have a bunch of sitenotices ready to go, and will develop further variants and iterations during the fundraiser. Other interesting updates (blog, quotes, etc.) are hoped for and planned. Hopefully basic live reporting will be in place from the start. * We'll have neat banners & buttons for blogs ready to go, and we'll encourage people to remix them. * Jay & Frank are working on outreach and messaging. For example, we hope to have some radio public service announcements this year, and Frank is planning an international outreach event to support the fundraiser. * We will have continued major gifts solicitation, now with support of Rebecca Handler, Head of Major Gifts. Sara Crouse is actively managing relationships with foundations and ongoing grants development.
There will be no scrolling marquees this year, no third party logos in the sitenotice, and the notice will continue to be collapsible for signed in users. There will, as always, be a detailed Q&A, a draft version of which we'll post publicly later this week. :-)
More soon, Erik