On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
- Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
Does continuously saying "our traffic level is stupidly high and costs a fortune / everyone at our web ranking has an actual budget and income stream / we're operating on a shoestring / we're desperately in need of cash" count?
No. Did I really have to say that? ;-)
Then take it as read ;-)
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising!
Post your idea below:
--->
- d.
How about, we hold a bunch of bake sales worldwide? The money that is earned would then go to Wikimedia.
On 12/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
- Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
Does continuously saying "our traffic level is stupidly high and costs a fortune / everyone at our web ranking has an actual budget and income stream / we're operating on a shoestring / we're desperately in need of cash" count?
No. Did I really have to say that? ;-)
Then take it as read ;-)
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising!
Post your idea below:
--->
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising! Post your idea below: --->
What about selling printed volumes of featured articles organized by topic?
I don't really know anything about the economics of publishing... but the foundation might come out on top, no?
-Pat User:Babbage
What about a fundraising drive featuring matched gifts? :D
On the other hand, I *do* have a thought, but I doubt that it would be much use for fundraising. The idea is simply this:
Many newspapers in Australia (and surely a number of other Western nations) release little trinkets with their (extremely popular) Sunday editions. Would it be possible to take a project such as Wikipedia 0.5 or Wikipedia 1.0, review it to ensure that the WMF is satisfied with its quality, and then invite a few national newspapers to release it for a certain fee?
I'm fairly certain that there would be some interest from publishers in doing this, but I'm very wary of both the cost of replication and the fee that would have to be charged; the idea loses its lustre when it costs so much that no publisher will touch it, and I'm afraid that might happen.
Any thoughts on this?
Cheers, David Still (User:Daveydweeb)
On 12/29/06, Patrick Hall pathall@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising! Post your idea below: --->
What about selling printed volumes of featured articles organized by topic?
I don't really know anything about the economics of publishing... but the foundation might come out on top, no?
-Pat User:Babbage
-- Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -pkd _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 12/28/06, David Still daveydweeb@gmail.com wrote:
What about a fundraising drive featuring matched gifts? :D
The Democrats actually did an innovative fundraising drive with matching gifts -- but at the, let's call it, peer-to-peer level.
People could pledge to be matchers -- e.g. pledge to contribute $75 to match three donations of $25, or contribute $50 for a matching donation of $50, or pledge to contribute $5000 for 50 matching donations of $100, etc. and had the option of having their email/name be open to the people who matched their contributions.
Other people would come in and contribute and have their donations matched. They could write messages to the original donor, and publish a note online.
Another thing the DNC does is have monthly contributions, which they call Democracy Bonds. There's no reason Wikimedia should only accept one-time contributions.
On 31/12/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
The Democrats actually did an innovative fundraising drive with matching gifts -- but at the, let's call it, peer-to-peer level. People could pledge to be matchers -- e.g. pledge to contribute $75 to match three donations of $25, or contribute $50 for a matching donation of $50, or pledge to contribute $5000 for 50 matching donations of $100, etc. and had the option of having their email/name be open to the people who matched their contributions.
That's a great idea!
Another thing the DNC does is have monthly contributions, which they call Democracy Bonds. There's no reason Wikimedia should only accept one-time contributions.
Any sensible charity makes arrangements to try to subscribe contributors. I'm sure, in Danny's copious free time ...
- d.
The Cunctator wrote:
Another thing the DNC does is have monthly contributions, which they call Democracy Bonds. There's no reason Wikimedia should only accept one-time contributions. _______________________________________________
I don't recall exactly how it was done, but I was able to set up a monthly "subscription" donation to Wikipedia through PayPal. I'm pretty sure this was through a link I followed from a Wikipedia/Wikimedia page. Note that this was quite some time ago (over a year).
That does not appear to be an option available by following the donate link on Wikipedia today.
-Rich
Patrick Hall wrote:
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising! Post your idea below: --->
What about selling printed volumes of featured articles organized by topic?
I don't really know anything about the economics of publishing... but the foundation might come out on top, no?
-Pat User:Babbage
Hiya Pat.
That's indeed a great idea. Not only to bring up money, but simply... to further disseminate knowledge ;-)
Why has not that been done yet ? Well, first because paper publishing or DVD publishing is not really our business, so we need partnerships to do that. Surely, our tiny office can not take in charge shipping books all over the world. But there is a second much more important reason: liability. As you know, our content is not (yet) perfect. One may find copyright violations, so-called defamation etc... and whilst it is easy to quickly fix an online article when a problem is reported, it is not the case for a book. As a result, the legal consequences of the Foundation being a publisher may be HUGE. We do not want to take that risk. Really not. Imagine we get sued and we have to pay 2 millions dollars for a mistatement in an paper article ?
What to do then ? Having independand publishers take that risk for us. Big companies will not do it. They also have too much to lose. But small companies are willing to risk it.
We currently have one such company in France, and hopefully this company will do DVD versions of our content.
Yet, *this* company will sell the product, so how do we get the money?
The answer is "brand licensing strategy"
The idea is to charge other companies for the right to use our brand names and trademarks in creating derivative products. Any sale of a product using our brands must come with royalties.
This strategy is of limited use as of today, but expansion is to expect. The drawbacks of this strategy are essentially the following ones. First, there are many unauthorized uses. Most of the time, they come from a misunderstanding and can be fixed simply by a discussion. Sometimes, not. Until now, we have not chosen to go legal against misuses, but at some point, we might have to do it. We'll probably will have to make a BIG example one day. But we need to choose that example carefully, and be really really efficient to win that case. All this will cost money and professional help. Either it will be done by our legal counsel, or hopefully, by a pro-bono lawyer.
Second, if we want to actually use our trademarks, we need to secure the trademarks. To REALLY secure them, and in sufficient countries. Which means additional costs in terms of securing them and to pay people to manage them.
There is no moves as of today to go against people misusing the brand. I think no one is making big fat money with our brands, so it does not appear urgent. But we definitly need to plan for this.
However, we are actually working to secure the brands. It was on the agenda of last board meeting, we decided on which brands to secure and where, in priority. Securing the brand is a TOP priority.
Hopefully, once we have strong and well protected brands, we'll be able to draw significant money from them, in particular for publishing. I believe this will be uncontroversial. For example, a DVD of the english wikipedia may be sold by the third party 10 dollars, and the third party will give us a 1 dollar royalty.
German association have been doing something similar in the past 2 years at least, and it is quite successful. I believe it is a very important direction. It can provide good money with rather little effort. We'll probably need to fight a bunch a misusers at some point in the future. We may meet come complaints if we start putting the Wikipedia logo on toilet paper, but it is likely many brand uses will be uncontroversial. And once the brands are secured, this is likely to just be easy renewal.
BUT, first step is brand securing.
Some time ago, I listed here some ideas of some directions to collect money. I hope the discussion here will help finding more ideas and deepening them.
Anthere
Anthere wrote:
We may meet come complaints if we start putting the Wikipedia logo on toilet paper, but it is likely many brand uses will be uncontroversial.
That's a brilliant idea! Not the whole square but in a corner with a Wikipedia article for those people who are desparate to find something to read when they most need it.
Ec
We should make Wikipedia-brand toilet paper and market it towards... certain people. You know who I'm talking about.
On 12/31/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthere wrote:
We may meet come complaints if we start putting the Wikipedia logo on toilet paper, but it is likely many brand uses will be uncontroversial.
That's a brilliant idea! Not the whole square but in a corner with a Wikipedia article for those people who are desparate to find something to read when they most need it.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
David Gerard wrote:
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising!
Post your idea below:
--->
I know that including ads is not a good idea. I'm against that. However, what we have (and what costs money) is lots of traffic. Aside from ads or fund-raisers, how can we convert traffic into revenue? 'Tis a puzzle...
-Rich
I have a couple of ideas...
1) WikiWorld -- we take the existing cartoons, plus Greg draws a few more exclusive ones, plus personal commentary and autograph by him. Nothing fancy, just a small pamphlet... then we can sell it. I'd buy one (and I already donated $100).
2) Wikimedia Facebook is another possibility.
On 12/28/06, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising!
Post your idea below:
--->
I know that including ads is not a good idea. I'm against that. However, what we have (and what costs money) is lots of traffic. Aside from ads or fund-raisers, how can we convert traffic into revenue? 'Tis a puzzle...
-Rich _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
3) Selling a book featuring The Best of the Mailing Lists
4) Likewise with BJAODN
5) Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource on DVD(s)
Any thoughts?
On 12/28/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
I have a couple of ideas...
- WikiWorld -- we take the existing cartoons, plus Greg draws a few more
exclusive ones, plus personal commentary and autograph by him. Nothing fancy, just a small pamphlet... then we can sell it. I'd buy one (and I already donated $100).
- Wikimedia Facebook is another possibility.
On 12/28/06, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Perhaps we can get going on creative new ideas for fundraising!
Post your idea below:
--->
I know that including ads is not a good idea. I'm against that. However, what we have (and what costs money) is lots of traffic. Aside from ads or fund-raisers, how can we convert traffic into revenue? 'Tis a puzzle...
-Rich _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org