...for a fundraiser?
Admittedly, I don't know the current state of finances, though I get people asking me about it. But I assume money is still needed, and recently encountering what seemed like server load difficulties reminds me of it. There are of course other needs like staffing (not least someone to manage the day-to-day financial things, which might allow for better reporting on the subject as well).
Anyway, it's been more than five months since we started the last one. By the time we're ready to kick off, it might be six. We've contemplated quarterly fundraisers before, and certainly twice a year should hardly qualify as much of an inconvenience for people.
--Michael Snow
As best as anyone in the community knows, we're still well short of our operating budget, especially with the Foundation's commitment to Wikimania in just over two months.
I think it's time to ask for a little help. People know running one of the top 20 sites on the Web isn't cheap, after all.
Austin
On Wed, 24 May 2006, Michael Snow wrote:
...for a fundraiser?
It's a beautiful spring for it.
Admittedly, I don't know the current state of finances, though I get
Extrapolating from the Q4 budget last year, we could use a fundraiser to cover the first half of this year.
--SJ
ps - one can follow paypal donations here: http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/ongoing/index.php/2006/ and hardware orders here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers/hardware_orders
pps - Jeff Moe, wherever you are -- you are my hero.
On 5/25/06, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Excellent. I didn't realize there was so much coming in, even without an active fundraiser. I agree with Ant (if that is what she meant) that the "personal appeal" should probably show up for anonymous users on all wikis. It would be even nicer if that message would change regularly. I think it is important that people see that real progress is made towards these ambitious goals (e.g. the OEPC project to put Wikipedia on the "One Laptop Per Child").
As for another fundraiser, bring it on! :-)
Erik
Fundraising stats and figures are still up from the previous drives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia/Fundraising Can anyone lend me a hand with the formatting of the raw data? If so, I can extend the figures to cover the last few months and provide frequent updates during any new drives.
On 5/25/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with Ant (if that is what she meant) that the "personal appeal" should probably show up for anonymous users on all wikis. It would be even nicer if that message would change regularly.
These sound like good ideas. To me they also suggest a question: How can we figure out what fundraising tactics are actually the most effective? I propose that we run some "randomized evaluations," eg, by randomly varying the fundraising appeal that gets served to some visitors to the site. The randomization could be done based on the time of the page request, the IP, or something else. Then we could compare the contributions made by people who received different appeals, and subsequently focus on the ones that worked best.
Jeremy
Jeremy Tobacman wrote:
Fundraising stats and figures are still up from the previous drives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia/Fundraising Can anyone lend me a hand with the formatting of the raw data? If so, I can extend the figures to cover the last few months and provide frequent updates during any new drives.
On 5/25/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with Ant (if that is what she meant) that the "personal appeal" should probably show up for anonymous users on all wikis. It would be even nicer if that message would change regularly.
These sound like good ideas. To me they also suggest a question: How can we figure out what fundraising tactics are actually the most effective? I propose that we run some "randomized evaluations," eg, by randomly varying the fundraising appeal that gets served to some visitors to the site. The randomization could be done based on the time of the page request, the IP, or something else. Then we could compare the contributions made by people who received different appeals, and subsequently focus on the ones that worked best.
Jeremy _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
That's a great suggestion and long overdue. We should organize our public fundraising approaches more professionally and really study what is and isn't effective. If we can improve the effectiveness, we can have shorter or less frequent fundraisers. Currently our non-fundraiser donation rate is close to our operating expense thus allowing us to spread out our fundraisers. It's still not enough to sustain the operation when we consider our capital expenditures.
Michael
--- Michael Davis mdavis@wikia.com wrote:
That's a great suggestion and long overdue. We should organize our public fundraising approaches more professionally and really study what is and isn't effective. If we can improve the effectiveness, we can have shorter or less frequent fundraisers. Currently our non-fundraiser donation rate is close to our operating expense thus allowing us to spread out our fundraisers. It's still not enough to sustain the operation when we consider our capital expenditures.
Thus the need for a fundraising committee. There are at least several people beyond myself who are very interested in this type of thing and who have the needed technical skills to pull off at least part of it.
-- mav
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Michael Snow wrote:
...for a fundraiser?
Admittedly, I don't know the current state of finances, though I get people asking me about it. But I assume money is still needed, and recently encountering what seemed like server load difficulties reminds me of it. There are of course other needs like staffing (not least someone to manage the day-to-day financial things, which might allow for better reporting on the subject as well).
Anyway, it's been more than five months since we started the last one. By the time we're ready to kick off, it might be six. We've contemplated quarterly fundraisers before, and certainly twice a year should hardly qualify as much of an inconvenience for people.
--Michael Snow
Hello
Yup, I mentionned the issue rather recently as well, noting that a fundraising might be best before summer.
I asked Michael if we could get a financial report to evaluate the situation. Financial statements for the year are roughly done, but for a part about Wikimania still not fixed. I suppose Mav should soon give us more feedback I expect. We have approximately 530 000 dollars in cash, which is roughly what it was at the end of February.
Donations through PayPal are roughly between 25 to 35 000 dollars per week. It might be interesting to generalize the idea of putting the permanent donation link at the top of pages.
In terms of getting funds, we try to get more organised to collect funds from those using our content or setting up search systems on our db. Danny also made a pretty active search of sponsors for Wikimania. I also tried to strongly suggest donating to a couple of organisations through the special project committee, but with no success as of today :-(
In terms of expenses, we definitly have Wikimania coming.
Two techco meetings took place two weeks ago and a couple of days ago, so I suppose we can expect new order pretty soon :-)
There are some pretty advanced discussions to hire staff as well. CEO, legal in-house counsel as well as more assistants to help with OTRS and phone answering.
So, I'd say we would definitly benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
ant
On 5/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Donations through PayPal are roughly between 25 to 35 000 dollars per week. It might be interesting to generalize the idea of putting the permanent donation link at the top of pages.
Errrr, per week? If it's per week, we can go and sleep a little more soundly. If I remember weel, it is per month rather.
In terms of getting funds, we try to get more organised to collect funds from those using our content or setting up search systems on our db. Danny also made a pretty active search of sponsors for Wikimania. I also tried to strongly suggest donating to a couple of organisations through the special project committee, but with no success as of today :-(
In terms of expenses, we definitly have Wikimania coming.
Thanks to Danny, yes, the operating budget of Wikimania is on the way to being covered.
Two techco meetings took place two weeks ago and a couple of days ago, so I suppose we can expect new order pretty soon :-)
There are some pretty advanced discussions to hire staff as well. CEO, legal in-house counsel as well as more assistants to help with OTRS and phone answering.
So, I'd say we would definitly benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
Indeed.
Delphine
Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 5/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Donations through PayPal are roughly between 25 to 35 000 dollars per week. It might be interesting to generalize the idea of putting the permanent donation link at the top of pages.
Errrr, per week? If it's per week, we can go and sleep a little more soundly. If I remember weel, it is per month rather.
Gaaaaa.
Michael sent the exact numbers
Donations J : 372,317.44 F : 38,430.26 M : 34,106.87 A : 40,790.72
May is higher because we got a special donation (<small><small> you know, the 70 000 one </small></small>)
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I asked Michael if we could get a financial report to evaluate the situation. Financial statements for the year are roughly done, but for a part about Wikimania still not fixed. I suppose Mav should soon give us more feedback I expect. We have approximately 530 000 dollars in cash, which is roughly what it was at the end of February.
You have a report from me that lists per quarter spending and income for all of 2004, 2005 and the first quarter of this year. The only thing missing are Wikimania expenses for 2005 (Michael is working on incorporating that into the regular finances, last I heard) and a current liquid asset report (Micheal is much better situated to prepare that as well).
Donations through PayPal are roughly between 25 to 35 000 dollars per week. It might be interesting to generalize the idea of putting the permanent donation link at the top of pages.
s/per week/per month
We are also getting a fairly steady stream of mail donations as well. I'm away from the financial records right now, so I can't say just how much.
I would most certainly like to see the anonnote for every wiki have a small, permanent, donation message. The English Wikipedia has had 'Your [continued donations] keep Wikipedia running!' since the end of the last fundraiser. IMO, having that has helped result in the continued healthy donation rate and has eliminated the need to have a Q1 fundraiser. Also helping us has been a lower than expected increase in expenses.
In terms of getting funds, we try to get more organised to collect funds from those using our content or setting up search systems on our db. Danny also made a pretty active search of sponsors for Wikimania. I also tried to strongly suggest donating to a couple of organisations through the special project committee, but with no success as of today :-(
Getting funds in that way is great, but almost all of that kind of money will be program-specific (money that can only be used for, for example, to print textbooks in Africa or, as you mention, to help pay for a conference). So I suspect that most operating expenses (servers, bandwidth and staffing) will continue to require donations from readers.
In terms of expenses, we definitely have Wikimania coming.
I have yet to see a budget for Wikimania, so how are we planning that? One must know how much something will cost before trying to figure out if we have enough money for it. :)
Two techco meetings took place two weeks ago and a couple of days ago, so I suppose we can expect new order pretty soon :-)
IIRC, there was some talk after the last multi-hour outage to start building a second large fully Wikimedia-owned and controlled server farm and have it in a geographically different place than the current server farm (maybe near Brion in the LA area). The idea being, that if one server farm goes down, that the other could take over with minimal disruption to at least reading of pages. If that is the case, then we have some fairly serious server expenses coming up.
There are some pretty advanced discussions to hire staff as well. CEO, legal in-house counsel as well as more assistants to help with OTRS and phone answering.
Nod. But, IMO, we should seriously consider a better place for the Wikimedia main office before hiring lots of people. St Pete is fine as a tourist destination and maybe even as a satellite office of the foundation given that two board members and Danny live there, but the host city of the main office of an international organization? Sorry, but no.
Washington D.C. or NYC are places where almost every nation of world sends their ambassadors and where a multitude of other international organizations, which we really should be working closely with, are based. Talent pool is another consideration; many more people with the relevant experience we need already live in those cities.
So, I'd say we would definitely benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
I told the board before that I will not run another fundraiser without the help from a duly created fundraising committee. Nobody from the board has proposed the creation of such a committee yet and I won't waste my time (as I did with trying to help staff the finance committee) until the board acts.
We also really should pass a budget for the rest of the year before we have a fundraiser. I'm going to send the spending forecast you aleady have to the officers and committees this weekend. Hopefully, it won't take long to turn that into a proposed budget for the board to vote one.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I asked Michael if we could get a financial report to evaluate the situation. Financial statements for the year are roughly done, but for a part about Wikimania still not fixed. I suppose Mav should soon give us more feedback I expect. We have approximately 530 000 dollars in cash, which is roughly what it was at the end of February.
You have a report from me that lists per quarter spending and income for all of 2004, 2005 and the first quarter of this year. The only thing missing are Wikimania expenses for 2005 (Michael is working on incorporating that into the regular finances, last I heard) and a current liquid asset report (Micheal is much better situated to prepare that as well).
I haven't had much occasion to look for it recently, but I have been habving a hard time finding proper frinancial statements for the last completed fiscal year. I did find http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report and that seems to include expenses for the first two quarters of 2005. I understand that this is the last quarter of the fiscal year. I would expect that proper financial statements for the 2004-5 fiscal year end should be available somewhere. This should include a Statement of Income and Expenses and a Balance Sheet. Wikimania 2005 expenses should have no bearing on this since that took place after the fiscal year end. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place, and I just need a proper link to the statement.
The above noted interim report did show a depreciation expense, but gave no information about how that amount was calculated. Remember that depreciation calculations are not just a matter of tax deductions, but give an idea of the extent to which an organization has planned for hardware wearing out or becoming obsolete.
In terms of getting funds, we try to get more organised to collect funds from those using our content or setting up search systems on our db. Danny also made a pretty active search of sponsors for Wikimania. I also tried to strongly suggest donating to a couple of organisations through the special project committee, but with no success as of today :-(
Getting funds in that way is great, but almost all of that kind of money will be program-specific (money that can only be used for, for example, to print textbooks in Africa or, as you mention, to help pay for a conference). So I suspect that most operating expenses (servers, bandwidth and staffing) will continue to require donations from readers.
Targetted donations can be a problem for any non-profit organization, and some refuse such strings completely. They should probably appear on the balance sheet as some kind of contingent liability.
In terms of expenses, we definitely have Wikimania coming.
I have yet to see a budget for Wikimania, so how are we planning that? One must know how much something will cost before trying to figure out if we have enough money for it. :)
Absolutely true enough. Mav, I believe that you have been working hard and honestly in your post as Chief Financial Officer, but I sometimes wonder if you are being provided with all the information you need. As I understand the position in its usual definition, you should have full access on demand to _all_ financial records such as cancelled checks, deposit records, invoices and contracts with monetary implications. Without that access your title is a misnomer.
Two techco meetings took place two weeks ago and a couple of days ago, so I suppose we can expect new order pretty soon :-)
IIRC, there was some talk after the last multi-hour outage to start building a second large fully Wikimedia-owned and controlled server farm and have it in a geographically different place than the current server farm (maybe near Brion in the LA area). The idea being, that if one server farm goes down, that the other could take over with minimal disruption to at least reading of pages. If that is the case, then we have some fairly serious server expenses coming up.
That kind of back up facility has always been desirable, though I wouldn't go so far as to agree that LA would be the best place for it. I don't think that there is any need to build it all up at once, but a site can be chosen that starts as a more limited server which can be built up over an extended period of time.
There are some pretty advanced discussions to hire staff as well. CEO, legal in-house counsel as well as more assistants to help with OTRS and phone answering.
Nod. But, IMO, we should seriously consider a better place for the Wikimedia main office before hiring lots of people. St Pete is fine as a tourist destination and maybe even as a satellite office of the foundation given that two board members and Danny live there, but the host city of the main office of an international organization? Sorry, but no.
Washington D.C. or NYC are places where almost every nation of world sends their ambassadors and where a multitude of other international organizations, which we really should be working closely with, are based. Talent pool is another consideration; many more people with the relevant experience we need already live in those cities.
That's a strange view. One of the big advantages of an online organization is that it can be headquartered anywhere. As an average online user, when I connect I just want a good connection to wherever in the world it is. I can recognize the prestige argument for the location of a headquarters, but is it cost effective. Are the representatives of the African nations in NYC really the people that you want to deal with when you are trying to build an African project. If we want to have an impact on the people in those countries we would do better to have people in place on the ground, rather. If you want to appreciate the kinds of problems listen to Stephen Lewis' "Race Against Time". The first of this series of lectures is available through http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey.html Let's not assume that our goals will be served by cozying up to those who are a part of the problem if not their cause.
I don't subscribe to the idea that a talent pool is somehow concentrated in the New York and Washington rat race. Wikipedia is a synthesis of talents from around the world; we could find the talent pool that we need anywhere in the world. To the extent that these positions need to be filled by Americans, why should they be unwilling to move to the Sunshine State which has the additional benefit of not having a state personal income tax.
So, I'd say we would definitely benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
I told the board before that I will not run another fundraiser without the help from a duly created fundraising committee. Nobody from the board has proposed the creation of such a committee yet and I won't waste my time (as I did with trying to help staff the finance committee) until the board acts.
We also really should pass a budget for the rest of the year before we have a fundraiser. I'm going to send the spending forecast you aleady have to the officers and committees this weekend. Hopefully, it won't take long to turn that into a proposed budget for the board to vote one.
Congratulations for taking a stand.
Ec
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So, I'd say we would definitely benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
I told the board before that I will not run another fundraiser without the help from a duly created fundraising committee. Nobody from the board has proposed the creation of such a committee yet and I won't waste my time (as I did with trying to help staff the finance committee) until the board acts.
Now, now...shhhh
Right, we never succeeded to create a decent financial committee. This said, I am not convinced the fundraising should be part of the financial committee (it involves as well technical needs, communication issues etc...) and I would suggest that we should not get stuck on such bureaucratic details.
Let's simply create a fundraising committee. If some one wants to dissolve it later, or attached it to another already existing committee... fine.
Can you draft for us a resolution with * the creation of a fundraising committee * description of the goal * a team * a delegation for this fundraising
I'll post it on the board wiki and we'll see if the board acts (votes...)
(make it several resolutions if you feel necessary)
We also really should pass a budget for the rest of the year before we have a fundraiser. I'm going to send the spending forecast you aleady have to the officers and committees this weekend. Hopefully, it won't take long to turn that into a proposed budget for the board to vote one.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Fundraising is far more a public relations/communications function than finance or tech. All finance needs to do is say how much money we need; tech can assist in the implementation but the success or failure of a fundraiser depends on how effective we are communicating with the donors. I'd recommend fundraising be a function of the communications committee with significant help from other group within the foundation.
Michael
Anthere wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So, I'd say we would definitely benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
I told the board before that I will not run another fundraiser without the help from a duly created fundraising committee. Nobody from the board has proposed the creation of such a committee yet and I won't waste my time (as I did with trying to help staff the finance committee) until the board acts.
Now, now...shhhh
Right, we never succeeded to create a decent financial committee. This said, I am not convinced the fundraising should be part of the financial committee (it involves as well technical needs, communication issues etc...) and I would suggest that we should not get stuck on such bureaucratic details.
Let's simply create a fundraising committee. If some one wants to dissolve it later, or attached it to another already existing committee... fine.
Can you draft for us a resolution with
- the creation of a fundraising committee
- description of the goal
- a team
- a delegation for this fundraising
I'll post it on the board wiki and we'll see if the board acts (votes...)
(make it several resolutions if you feel necessary)
We also really should pass a budget for the rest of the year before we have a fundraiser. I'm going to send the spending forecast you aleady have to the officers and committees this weekend. Hopefully, it won't take long to turn that into a proposed budget for the board to vote one.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Nod, a good option as well.
... only point... Mav is not a member of the comcom. Is that a problem ?
Ant
Michael Davis wrote:
Fundraising is far more a public relations/communications function than finance or tech. All finance needs to do is say how much money we need; tech can assist in the implementation but the success or failure of a fundraiser depends on how effective we are communicating with the donors. I'd recommend fundraising be a function of the communications committee with significant help from other group within the foundation.
Michael
Anthere wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
So, I'd say we would definitely benefit from a fundraising. It is not *urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
I told the board before that I will not run another fundraiser without the help from a duly created fundraising committee. Nobody from the board has proposed the creation of such a committee yet and I won't waste my time (as I did with trying to help staff the finance committee) until the board acts.
Now, now...shhhh
Right, we never succeeded to create a decent financial committee. This said, I am not convinced the fundraising should be part of the financial committee (it involves as well technical needs, communication issues etc...) and I would suggest that we should not get stuck on such bureaucratic details.
Let's simply create a fundraising committee. If some one wants to dissolve it later, or attached it to another already existing committee... fine.
Can you draft for us a resolution with
- the creation of a fundraising committee
- description of the goal
- a team
- a delegation for this fundraising
I'll post it on the board wiki and we'll see if the board acts (votes...)
(make it several resolutions if you feel necessary)
We also really should pass a budget for the rest of the year before we have a fundraiser. I'm going to send the spending forecast you aleady have to the officers and committees this weekend. Hopefully, it won't take long to turn that into a proposed budget for the board to vote one.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Nod, a good option as well.
... only point... Mav is not a member of the comcom. Is that a problem ?
I object for this reason: A great many people who would help with fundraising have little to no concern about the other functions the communication committee does. The only role I see the comcom playing in fundraising is creating a press release to announce the start and another press release to announce the end.
What communication goes on in-between has more to do with financial reporting (daily reports, which requires access to our financial records ; not something the comcom is set-up for). Comcom should play a role, but so should finance and tech. My point is that no one pre-thought of committee is a good fit to handle fundraising. Thus the need for a separate body.
--mav
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--- Michael Davis mdavis@wikia.com wrote:
Fundraising is far more a public relations/communications function than finance or tech. All finance needs to do is say how much money we need; tech can assist in the implementation but the success or failure of a fundraiser depends on how effective we are communicating with the donors. I'd recommend fundraising be a function of the communications committee with significant help from other group within the foundation.
I disagree. Fundraising requires a combination of tech, communication, and finance functions. It does not really fit in any one role.
-- mav
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--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Let's simply create a fundraising committee. If some one wants to dissolve it later, or attached it to another already existing committee... fine.
That is exactly what I want. You convinced me months ago that fundraising is not really a good fit under finance, communications, or tech. IMO, it really should be its own thing, since it requires a bit of all three.
Can you draft for us a resolution with
- the creation of a fund raising committee
- description of the goal
- a team
- a delegation for this fundraising
I'll post it on the board wiki and we'll see if the board acts (votes...)
Deal. :)
-- mav
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