Hoi,
Thanks for a thoughtful piece. I will only respond to the first part, the second part is imho out of scope.
When the WMF wants more funding, it can if it trusts its chapters. The current funding model has chapters rely totally on the vagaries of the funding committee. Legally they are distinct and fundamentally they may want to do things different for reasons of their own. Now they cannot or do not because of the additional stress involved.
Yes more funding is an easy option. Donations are a constructive way of securing funding. In the Netherlands they are seen as positive where endowments are not. Endowments could be used to prove a positive point. Invest in green energy worldwide with the argument; "we want to offset the negative impact of sharing the sum of all knowledge and it becomes an argument that works for us AND works as an investment". It is similar to the argument why Greenpeace asked Google, Microsoft, Apple to go green.
When we enable fundraising in a meaningful way, we can still have policies to do better in the world. It is why I am a fan of the Swiss working on Kiwix. I like that from France they are working on Africa. Enabling and financing efforts in other countries is what should be seen as important for cash flush countries. Personally the project I am most proud of is the collaboration with the Tropenmuseum because of its impact on the Indonesian Wikipedia (it did not cost us money though).
Yes, we can have more funding. Yes, when something can be funded by another party it is welcome when it aligns with what we want to do anyway. Yes people chafe at the text messages during the fundraiser (it is tradition) and YES we are a force for good and we can make the endowment fund make that obvious. Thanks, GerardM
On 3 February 2016 at 12:06, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
I can see the logic in trying for a different funding source, fundraising banners and their messaging have been a cause of tension between the WMF and the community; and asking our readers for money relies on our readers coming to our desktop sites directly and is at risk in a world where our data becomes ubiquitous, but increasingly repackaged and presented by others.
But there are a couple of alternate strategies which I think would serve us better.
Firstly evolution is better than revolution, and in our case that could mean shifting the emphasis from annual one off donations to signing people up for recurring donations. Here in the UK many people open a bank account in their teens and keep it for life. So if you sign people up for a regular payment by direct debit you have a revenue stream that will persist for decades. Short of financial disaster or death people rarely cancel direct debits to charities. I know WIkimedia UK had a lot of success at signing people up for direct debits back in 2011 when they were part of the fundraiser, there has also been some work done on asking former donors to give again. Shifting from a strategy of asking our readers for donations to one of asking new and past donors to sign up for a regular contribution would give us more financial security, less dependence on people using our sites directly and hopefully open the way for less intrusive messaging that is more mission aligned and doesn't scare people into thinking that Wikipedia is under financial threat. It would also be a much smaller step from our current strategy than one of asking big corporates and grant givers for money. When a donor who gives 0.0001% of the WMF's income threatens to stop donating you can ignore the threat and treat their complaint on its merits. When a donor who gives 0.1% of the WMF's income is upset they are likely to have inside contacts whose job it is to keep such donors donating.
Secondly having CC-BY-SA contributions repackaged and reused as if they were CC0 is a trend that the WMF could resist, first with diplomacy and if necessary with lawyers. Remember in most languages we aren't currently under threat from someone creating a rival to Wikipedia, our threat is from mirrors that present Wikipedia in more attractive ways. Attribution would undermine the business model of those mirrors who aim for the ads they wrap our content in to be less intrusive than WMF fundraising, legalese and editing options. It would keep a proportion of the really interested and the really grateful clicking through to Wikimedia sites where they can be recruited as donors of either time or money. It would also realign the strategy of the WMF with the aspirations of a large part of the community, those whose motivation comes in part from contributing under CC-BY-SA rather than CC0.
Regards
Jonathan/WereSpielChequers
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