Hello all, A year ago, the WMF Fundraising team ran an experiment showing donation appeals on Facebook. While the experiment was valuable, we need more experience and data to properly assess Facebook’s viability as a potential revenue channel. This is important to us because leveraging Facebook’s broad audience allows us to meet our users where they prefer to engage online. Over the last few months, we have been working on content variations for a new experiment, trying content more closely based on the messaging that already performs well on Wikipedia. *I’m writing today to say we will be launching our second Facebook ads experiment on Monday, June 18.* We would like to note we are approaching this test with caution and are making every effort to protect our donors’ information. We’ve been working closely with the Foundation’s Legal team to re-review Facebook’s latest policies and terms of service before a single ad is placed. We are not uploading our donor lists to Facebook for any list matching or donor suppression (meaning active Wikipedia donors may see these ads). All ads will direct donors to the Foundation’s hosted donation pages, and we are not sending Facebook any conversion metrics or personally identifiable information on who donates from the ads we run. The parameters for this experiment are very similar to those my colleague Sam laid out in his email last year, which I am including below for reference. The high level details are: *WHEN:* Beginning Monday, June 18 - appx June 30 *WHO:* Facebook users in the US who speak English. We will do some more specific demographic targeting based on age, education, and interests, but are deliberately starting by casting a wide net for this experiment. *COST: *We are committing $5,000 USD in a cost per click agreement. If this experiment shows promising results, we may commit more funds to additional creative tests. Facebook advertising is not yet a fixture of our long-term fundraising strategy; this is simply an experiment to help us gauge how valuable this platform could be to us in the future. If we decide to more permanently integrate Facebook into our budget and strategy, we will follow up. If you have questions about this experiment, please don't hesitate to ask. Thanks, Caitlin ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Samuel Patton &lt;spatton(a)wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 10:58 AM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising pilot on Facebook To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Hi everyone, I'm writing to let you know about a project we're trying on the Foundation's fundraising team. Thanks to all the help and advice we've received from our colleagues in Communications, Legal, and Community Engagement. *I've posted this announcement as an update on Fundraising's Meta Page <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Updates>, and would be happy to answer questions and keep the discussion up there.* Over the next three weeks, the Advancement team will be conducting a small fundraising pilot on Facebook and Instagram. This will involve sponsored posts, served in English to people in the United States, that will direct users to donate to the Foundation using our own donation processing pages. Fundraising is always interested in exploring new ways to reach people who find value in Wikipedia and are interested in supporting the Foundation’s mission. Advertising across social networks is a proven and popular way for nonprofits to find new supporters and build organizational awareness, and we’re excited to dip our toes into this. Like the many tests we run for Fundraising, this pilot will involve experiments testing different imagery, copy, and calls to action. We hope to answer the question: how well does our on-Wikipedia.org messaging perform when presented on another site? It will also examine how our appeals perform across demographic and interest groups. *Where will the ads appear?* This pilot will use “sponsored posts,” which is what Facebook calls content that appears in the news feed of Facebook users. They will also appear on Instagram as “sponsored stories” that appear within the flow of photo and video posts users scroll on that network. (Instagram is a Facebook property.) They will not appear as banners, pop-ups, or display ads that appear alongside the news feed. This is a test in what is called “native” advertising, meaning it uses the same content display area that users expect from Facebook and Instagram. *How will you target your ads?* In addition to the broad parameters of language (English) and country (U.S.), we have identified a few target audiences that might respond particularly well to our appeals: educators, philanthropists, and frequent consumers of news. We will build these audiences based off self reported information about educational achievement, news readership, and philanthropic interest. I've included details on each audience below. In addition to these, we have discussed the value of comparing effectiveness across other characteristics - age, gender, etc. A large part of the value in running this experiment is to *learn* whether there are any demographic differences in how people respond to our messaging. If this experiment does give us compelling info about who is more likely to donate, that is exciting! And we'll talk as a group about what to do with that knowledge. *Can users opt out?* Of course. Users can hide individual ads if they are not of interest to them. This is also something we can measure to better understand how to not annoy or impose on social media users in future fundraising drives. *Who is working on this?* Fundraising is partnering with the social media folks in Communications to run this test. The promotion and measurement of ads is being managed by a small company called Middle Seat. *Will you keep us in the loop?* Absolutely. By July 15 we intend to share an overview of our testing so far. Stay tuned for more updates! sam ----------------------- *Possible target audiences:* *STUDENTS & EDUCATORS* *How likely to donate are current students and educators?* Age: 18 - 65+ Target: Current students above high school level and educators based on self-reported “job title” Reach: 1,000,000+ *PHILANTHROPISTS* *How likely to donate are Facebook users interested in both philanthropy and donating to charitable causes?* Age: 18 - 65+ Target: Facebook users with self-reported interests in philanthropy and donating to charity Reach: ~460,000 *NEWS READERS* *How likely to donate are Facebook users whose behavior suggests they’re daily news consumers?* Age: 18 - 65+ Target: Facebook users with interests and behavior that suggests daily news consumption Reach: ~1,000,000 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> -- Caitlin Cogdill Senior Fundraising Email Manager Wikimedia Foundation Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>