If you wanted to continue past the target, the message should NOT imply that you would
stop at the target.
Cheers,
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lisa
Gruwell
Sent: Friday, 16 December 2016 8:05 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] English Fundraiser Update
Hi everyone,
As most of you know, we run our English-language online fundraiser on Wikipedia every year
in December. It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year.
During this time we raise the bulk of funds to support our operating budget to support the
projects, fund community efforts around the world, and run the Wikimedia Foundation.
This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million in record time.
This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how much support we have from
people all over the world.
Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to continue to
fundraise more in the month of December, for the following
reasons:
1. While we have reached our goal for the December campaign, we have not yet reached our
fundraising goal for Fiscal Year 2016-17 (July 2016 - July 2017).
Continuing the English fundraiser gives us security and flexibility through the end of the
fiscal year. It allows us to have a less aggressive banner schedule in coming months,
which gives us time for more research and better localization.
2. We have clear programmatic uses for additional funds.
We have some important projects that could use additional funds and are ready to proceed.
We plan to direct additional funds to the following work:
1.
The buildout of an additional caching center, to improve site
performance for users across Asia and Oceania [1].
2.
Investment in additional support for structured data on Wikimedia
Commons and improved integration with the Wikidata roadmap [2].
3.
Support for community health initiatives, including additional support
for the Community Engagement team [3].
4.
Support for an inclusive and truly global movement strategy process [4].
5.
Growing the endowment in order to secure our future [5].
You can find more information about each of these areas of work below.
We have chosen these projects because they directly support our mission and respond to the
needs of Wikimedia communities and users. We also believe these investments are
investments in our future: support for a diverse global community, increased resourcing
for sister projects, a healthier community culture, a shared direction for the future of
the movement, and security for our mission in perpetuity.
Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few more days. We
would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before making an end-of-year push in
the final couple days of the year. (Many people choose to give at the very end of the
year, and they are expecting to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give
people who plan to give the easiest means to participate).
We’ve been following the conversations on this list about the fundraiser and the target.
On Wednesday, we sent this recommendation to our Board of Trustees, who were broadly
supportive of this course of action. Today, we are sending it to you. We believe we can
make good use of the funds in the coming year, without additional unsustainable
commitments into coming fiscal years. It is fiscally responsible and programmatically
sound. The additional work strengthens our movement, and the additional funds make these
efforts possible.
We welcome your questions and feedback.
Best regards,
Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez
More information about the projects:
[1] An additional caching center to improve performance in Asia and Oceania
Our current caching centers in have provided significant value to users, and the Wikimedia
Foundation invested further in them in 2014-15. We believe that further expanding these
efforts and their reach into other parts of the world would further help us provide the
best user experience to our global audience. With that in mind, we are considering a
number of different locations for an additional caching center to enhance our performance
for Wikimedia communities in Asia and Oceania. Most internet organizations compete to
reach users by establishing local points of presence, and as a result the performance
expectations of users in Asia are getting higher. Establishing this new caching center
will help us meet those expectations for site performance.
[2] Structured data on Commons*
The Structured Data project
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data> is an effort to store
information for media files in a structured way on Wikimedia Commons, so they are easier
to view, translate, search, edit, curate and use. This would be done on Commons with the
same technology as the one developed for Wikidata. Wikimedia Commons holds a lot of data
about the files it hosts. Structuring this data more and making it machine-readable would
have many benefits to making our files more accessible in multiple languages, improving
the process for uploading media, increasing the usability of the search function, and
decreasing ambiguity for people interested in re-use of media on Commons. A demo system is
currently
available:
https://structured-commons.wmflabs.org
[3] Responding to harassment and toxic behaviour*
On November 13th, the Board issued a letter
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-December/085668.html>
to the Wikimedia community in support of efforts to improve overall community culture and
health. The letter confirmed the value of allocating resources to this work. The WMF
Support and Safety team detailed some of the possible approaches in a letter by Patrick
Earley. Funding from this year’s fundraiser would be directed at supporting these
approaches, including technical tools for better blocking and detection.
[4] Movement strategy process
Katherine recently shared the exciting news that the Board has approved a US$2.5million
spending resolution to support the development of a Wikimedia movement strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017>. Coming to
consensus on a strategic direction will help us know what destination we are headed, which
path we will take, and how we will ensure our work is well supported.
[5] The Wikimedia Endowment
The Wikimedia Endowment <https://15.wikipedia.org/endowment.html>, launched earlier
this year during the Wikipedia 15 celebration, serves as a perpetual source of support for
Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Since then, we have already received some major gifts and are recruiting a talented and
committed board for the endowment. In June, we seeded the endowment in part with
contributions from last year's campaign. Further investment in the endowment is an
investment in building a sustainable future for Wikimedia projects.
*Note: We are also seeking foundation grants for these projects – Structured Data on
Commons and responding to harassing and toxic behavior – which may cover all or a portion
of their costs this fiscal year.
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