I wonder if a regular fee of $60 will raise much more than one of $30, as certainly much less people will take the bait on such a considerable sum. After all it does not buy them much except the satisfaction that they contributed to a healthy Wikipedia. I have no idea where the optimum lies, we would have to ask some economist to measure the price elasticity of a clean conscience and/or ideological zeal, but this is a considerable amount for people with average income. $30 sounds much better to me, keep the goodies like a coffee mug with logo for people who add an extra donation of $30 or more. Yes people can opt for a $6 contribution, but we would not want to push them in that direction, would we?

Since this choice is pretty arbitrary and a suboptimal choice will cost us, could we not keep a anonymous vote of what people would be willing to pay? There are nice applets that make this a quickie to pull off.

On the other hand $500 to $1000 sounds ridiculously low for a company that wants to donate. We might offer to add their logo on a sponsor page, but that should start at no less than $10,000 IMO. If they want to be recognized as sponsors they should have made a real difference.

Erik Zachte