I was just looking on Foundation's fund-rising page and have two comments.
1. I think that "Merchandise" and "Donations" should be separated, similar to what http://www.mozilla.org/ does. I believe more people would visit "Merchandise" or "WikiPedia merchandise" resulting in more sales => more funding. I believe that because in people's minds "donating" and "buying cool stuff" (even if it ultimately leads to funding a good cause) is strongly separated.
In more specific terms, things that could be done: * a link to "Merchandise" on main wikipedia.org page, in the nav section, next to "Donations" link * this link goes to a separate page on foundation's website which only deals with merchandise (and not all donations options)
In general I think that foundation should study what Mozilla project does for fundraising as they are not larger/more visible project but according to http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=110721 they do much better at getting funding via. t-shirt sales ($15,000.00 for mozilla vs. $460.90 for wikipedia).
Things that I think mozilla.org does better: * much nicer web design. No offense, but http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising is bad, both functionally (it's hard to read, the copy isn't that great) and visually (compare to http://www.mozillastore.com/products/clothing) * selling t-shirts on open-source conventions (linuxcon/oscon/devday) which is what http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=110721 implies that mozilla foundation is doing (I don't really know, I haven't been there)
2. More t-shirt designs.
I think that a design that gives emphasis on personal involvement in the project would be more attractive to people than a generic design with a logo. E.g. designs with teksts such as "I contribute to WikiPedia.org" or "I wrote for Encyclopedia \n wikipedia.org", "I write Encyclopedia articles \n wikipedia.org". I'm not claiming that exactly this wording should be used - I just want to give an example of what I mean (emphasis on contributing/writing for WikiPedia/Encyclopedia).
Also, I think that Mozilla's "$50 donation t-shirt" (http://www.mozillastore.com/products/donations/50shirt) is a good idea. It could even had a text that says that e.g. "I donated to WikiPedia", "I make Free Encyclopedia possible", "I fund Free Encyclopedia" - something along those lines.
Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info