Besides what readers think when they're fully informed, I'm also concerned about the legal issues surrounding the fundraising. IANAL, but I have a feeling that consumer protection attorneys may take an interest if they feel that there is a meaningful disconnect between what messages FR conveys and (1) how the funds are actually spent and/or (2) the overall financial health of WMF. Let's avoid inflicting legal costs and PR damage on ourselves, please. (:

Pine

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:17 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 4:56 PM, Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

So, we have drilled down on this more in our research to better understand what our readers think on this topic. We should have more to share on that in a week or two.

What readers think about this topic will very much depend on what information they have been given.

You need to find out what readers think who know

1. the cost of Internet hosting relative to the total budget (about 3

percent); 2. that you took five times as much money last year as you took five years ago; 3. how much money the Foundation has in cash and investments; 4. that the number of paid staff has increased more than twentyfold since 2007; 5. how the vastly increased spending is affecting reader experience.

Do you know what readers who know all of this think about the banners? Have there been focus groups with donors who were given all of this information?

This is necessary to make sure that when (not if) readers do find all of this information out, there won't be a storm of protest from people who feel they were misled as to the Foundation's financial situation. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe