2009/9/17 Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net>et>: Obviously there are more of them, Gregory didn't say otherwise. That smaller donors are more likely to give repeat donations is (assuming it is true) precisely why we need to make an effort to cultivate the medium sized donors. Obviously good will and spreading the word are important, but they aren't really related to fundraising (at least, not in that direction - work on good will should help fundraising, not the other way around).

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 3:22 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: In Wikimedia's past public fund raising campaigns (i.e. the things with banner messages shown to the public) one usually sees about 80% of the total income come in amounts of $100 or less. On the other hand, most of WMF's really large grants and donors have come from direct solicitations that are not part of the public campaigns. I would assume that Rand et al. see the $500 to $10k bracket as a target of opportunity precisely because it has been undercultivated in the past. It is a large enough number that such donations are rarely made during the public campaigns (and make up only a small fraction of the campaign totals), and yet at the same time it is too small to have gotten the same level of attention that might go into soliciting a major foundation for $100k+ grant. -Robert Rohde