I wonder if a regular fee of $60 will raise much more than one of $30, as
certainly much less people will take the bait on such a considerable sum.
After all it does not buy them much except the satisfaction that they
contributed to a healthy Wikipedia. I have no idea where the optimum lies,
we would have to ask some economist to measure the price elasticity of a
clean conscience and/or ideological zeal, but this is a considerable amount
for people with average income. $30 sounds much better to me, keep the
goodies like a coffee mug with logo for people who add an extra donation of
$30 or more. Yes people can opt for a $6 contribution, but we would not want
to push them in that direction, would we?
Since this choice is pretty arbitrary and a suboptimal choice will cost us,
could we not keep a anonymous vote of what people would be willing to pay?
There are nice applets that make this a quickie to pull off.
On the other hand $500 to $1000 sounds ridiculously low for a company that
wants to donate. We might offer to add their logo on a sponsor page, but
that should start at no less than $10,000 IMO. If they want to be recognized
as sponsors they should have made a real difference.
Erik Zachte