Hi all,
As Lila’s email said, we launched our end of year English fundraising campaign on Tuesday. I wanted to share a little more background on the mechanics of the English Wikipedia campaign, and where we are on our goals this year to-date.
Starting today, banners are being shown to 100% of anonymous readers on English Wikipedia in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Our end of year campaign goal is $20 million. As Lila mentioned, our goal is to serve more powerful reminders to be able to limit the total number of banners each reader sees. We are constantly experimenting with new methods to reach our readers and optimize the donation experience.
Around the world, banners have been showing to a low level of traffic since the start of the fiscal year in July. We have also run campaigns to 100% of traffic in Japan, South Africa, Malaysia, Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Belgium, and France. These campaigns have shown good results, and we look forward to sharing more detail in our regular annual fundraising report.
If you spot any errors or have problems donating, your can reach us quickly at: problemsdonating@wikimedia.org
We also anticipate some of you will want to know more about this process and may have questions. If you have questions or comments, please let us know on our Meta talk page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising
We look forward to answering your questions to the best of our ability, but the team has limited resources and everyone will be working at an increased pace in December, particularly during the launch week (12/2-12/5). Unfortunately, this means we will not be able to respond to questions on Wikimedia-l as they arise -- so instead we have set aside time to review your questions on Meta, and post an update by December 15 and again in January.
Thank you again for all your support now and throughout the year!
Megan
On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 12:53 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Lila - thank you for this thoughtful update. Fundraising trends and data are always welcome, particularly where communities can help improve and test local messages.
I am also deeply thankful for the smooth work of the fundraising team, who have made great progress over the last few years – in storytelling & translation, mobile giving, testing & data analysis. I look forward to seeing what we learn this year.
Sam
On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 1:53 AM, Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org wrote:
All -- we will not have a pop-up banner.
I know you want more insight into the trends: we will provide some of
those
in our upcoming reports and metrics and we will plan to shift to a quarterly cadence of a more specific metrics report that will include fundraising.
Just to cover some basic trends: the last two years have significantly changed our traffic composition. Regionally, we are seeing growth in emerging languages and regions. This is great: people who need the knowledge most, but cannot afford it and often live in countries where
free
speech is criminalized are learning about Wikipedia. We need to keep supporting that. In Europe, North America, Australia, etc. we see
Wikipedia
becoming a part of the fabric of the internet itself: embedded in web searches, operating systems, and other online resources. This is great
too:
people get knowledge wherever they are. Both of those trends however can make it more difficult to raise funds (and sometimes contribute), so we have to make sure we adapt.
We are doing a lot of work around thinking through a diversified fundraising strategy. That said, our main tool today are the site
banners.
Just to be clear: the pop-up banner had advantages. It tested high with readers, was only shown once to each user and cut the total number of impressions needed by a factor of 7! We did hear your concerns however.
The
Fundraising team listened and quickly integrated your feedback. While our launch banner will be different from last year’s, it will not be a
pop-up,
overlay content, or be sticky. As always this starting design will
iterate
daily and have parallel tests, so you may see variations at any given
time.
Megan Hernandez will send another email with more details about the
process
to-date, and how best to communicate with Fundraising during the coming month.
And in the spirit of the holidays I'd like to thank the fundraising team for all of their hard work and to all of the volunteers who have helped with the campaigns.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 7:39 PM, MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > Ori Livneh wrote: > >On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 5:55 PM, MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > >>The banners may be effective, but they're not aligned withWikimedia's
values.
I wouldn't come out quite as strongly against these banners, but I
share
the underlying sentiment.
What happened to "we make the Internet not suck"? What happened to the near-universal agreement that pop-ups are bad?
(a) solicit input from a neutral reputation management consultancy,
and
Consultants are the reason the fundraising campaigns and associated banners are so awful. To the idea that we continue paying people needlessly for bad advice, I'm going to say no thank you. I'd rather
not.
(b) create a forum for staffers to talk openly about this matter,
without
fear of reprisal
What's wrong with wikimedia-l? I can assure you that this mailing list
has
grade-A reprisal, far better than what you'll receive from work. :-)
David Gerard wrote:
"Wikipedia begging for donations per usual. "Advertising isn't evil" they say as they throw a second nag at me as I scroll down."
Indeed. It might help if we started referring to the fundraising
banners
as full-page advertising. Calling a spade a spade, and all that.
It also occurred to me that it wouldn't be unreasonable for Adblock
(Plus)
to reconsider its classification of the fundraising notices (even "banners" is generous). Historically banners on Wikimedia wikis have
not
been considered ads by Adblock and friends, but this assumed decency
and
common sense on Wikimedia's part. These full-page gremlins lack both.
Obnoxious banners *really do damage the brand*.
What are the fundraiser metrics? If they don't include effect on the brand, they'll be motivating damaging behaviour.
We used to have live-updating statistics about the annual fundraiser at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics.
That
error message is probably highly misleading and we really ought to have better reporting about donations. As far as I know, we've taken several steps backward in recent years in terms of donation transparency and
this
should be addressed in 2015. (I'm somewhat hoping someone will quickly prove me wrong with a link to up-to-date donor stats... go on!)
MZMcBride
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