Hey All
The end of the year is extremely productive, rewarding and very busy for the Wikimedia Fundraising team with fundraising occurring in 14 countries and 4 languages. Just a quick update on our fundraising activities.
===Online Fundraising===
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We were originally scheduled to run a fundraising Campaign in JAPAN through September. Following the landfall of Typhoon Jebi, and extensive damage to the country, we as a team decided to delay the fundraising campaign to the first half of 2019.
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Since the beginning of October we have been running our desktop fundraising banners in FRANCE. Mobile launched on Tuesday 9th. The banner campaign is scheduled to run to the end of October.
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During the months of October and November we are also ramping up our preparations for our main English fundraising banner campaign in USA, CANADA, UK, IRELAND, NEW ZEALAND and AUSTRALIA. As with previous years, that means running banners on English Wikipedia and emailing past donors.
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Regular banner testing will continue and intensify through the months of October and November. This testing consists of a series of single and multi hour tests and will increase in cadence as we get closer to December. We do this to explore new ideas, test systems, improve workflows etc all in time for the busiest period of the year. As previous years, the main push will begin on or around Giving Tuesday, November 27.[1] We will look to fundraise through the month of December.
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E-mail fundraising in these countries has already begun where we ask previous donors to reaffirm their support to Wikimedia. Just like the banner campaign, we extensively test our appeals. The email campaign started over the last week and will continue steadily through the rest of this calendar year.
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Another upcoming campaign will be Latin America consisting of BRAZIL, PERU, URUGUAY, ARGENTINA, MEXICO, CHILE, COLOMBIA. We have worked closely with the Iberocoop communities and affiliates in these areas to localise the banner language. This campaign will be using a slightly different format, running at a low percentage of page views and over a longer time period. We are excited to see how this improves the effects of the campaign on both community and the fundraising team.
===Major Gifts and Endowment===
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This week we announced a $2 million gift to the Wikimedia Endowment from George Soros, founder of the Open Society Foundation. [2] -
Also announced recently, Amazon recently gave $1 million to the Wikimedia Endowment. This is an important acknowledgement by the Internet retailer of the need for the future sustainability of the Wikimedia Projects. [3] -
Since the launch of the endowment in January 2016, the endowment has raised over $27.5 million from generous donors, philanthropists, and Wikimedia community members.
There are a number of ways you can help support the fundraiser:
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Have specific ideas or stories we should tell via social media, banners, emails etc.? We’re also looking for nice images, if you could point us to your favorites from Commons. Please add them to our fundraising ideas page. [4]
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If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a Phabricator ticket. [5]
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If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS, or social media with questions about donating or having difficulties in the donation process, please refer them to donate{{at}}wikimedia.org.
We look forward to working with you all in the coming weeks.
Many thanks