A fundraising update, forwarded from internal with Rand's permission. These regular updates are great (you could start your own topical wiki 'zine with them).

--SJ

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rand Montoya rmontoya@wikimedia.org Date: Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:46 PM Subject: [Internal-l] Fundraiser End of day Monday Update To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription)" internal-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Hey All--

Acknowledging that our early fundraising efforts extremely slow (less than 50% from last year) so we are switching up messaging and testing some new messages and approaches.

In addition, we continue to make strides to our significant technical hurdles:

1) GEO IP: I believe, but could be wrong, that this is working well. I continue to monitor things here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Launch_Feedback#Issue_with_G...

I'm finally going to knock this one off the list.

2) Credit Card Payment gateway page has been re-skinned (in addition to other improvements) for an even better donor experience.

3) Tracking: We continue to make progress towards both cleaning up some errant data and providing accurate public reporting. I expect that we will have something presentable on Wednesday at the earliest.

4) New Site Notices: After a weekend of data, we have significantly adjusted our messaging to both test and explore how our users respond to different messages.

We are running these on Non-English Wikipedia sites:

Wikipedia Forever 50% Thermometer - Articles (1) 25% Thermometer - Users (2) 25%

We are now in the following rotation on English Wikipedia:

Wikipedia Forever 20% Thermometer - Articles (1) 20% Now WP needs you (3) 20% WP Powered by you (4) 20% Ad Free WP (5) 20%

5) The titles of our primary donation page on WikimediaFoundation is no longer visible and annoying. :)

Still on the list for tomorrow (smaller items not included):

1) Tracking!

2) Cleaning up our errant data.

3) Plan next set of banners including a possible community banner. We should have a post up soon @alternate banners for process.

4) The infamous and dreaded Ariel Extension.

5) Project Specific Banner

6) Discussion of solution to Javascript banners and donation page.

7) Do reasonable followup on some possible fraudulent donations.

As always, I appreciate your questions and comments.

-Rand

(1): http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&... (2): http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&... (3): http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&... (4): http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&... (5): http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&...

-- Rand Montoya Head of Community Giving Wikimedia Foundation www.wikimedia.org Email: rand@wikimedia.org