[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
> We need to start fundraising again, and at least for today, we should
> have a link up on the 'wikipedia is dead' page to the donations page
> on the wikimedia website.  I am sure people will contribute at a time
> like this.

We are up to $7,002.69 total in the PayPal account. We were at $4,662.08 USD on
May 28. Difference: $2340.61 USD. I'll keep sending updates to this list until
I'm able to edit the actual fundraising page. 
 
> Going forward, I think that we need a constant message on every page
> of the site, most likely at the bottom of each article, saying
> something like "If you have found Wikipedia helpful, remember that we
> are a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from users like
> you."

There is already a donations link in the sidebar that has an alt text message
similar to that. But IMO we should have organized quarterly fund drives where
more obvious/intrusive messages are displayed - otherwise people will start to
tune out the message. 

> We have now a total of approximately $12,000-$14,000 in the bank...
> we are going to need to use that to buy additional apaches and
> probably additional squids.  Other than the fact that we're currently
> in the middle of a database fiasco, we likely have enough DB power for
> right now... although we should try to be ahead of the curve.

Where did the extra money come from (roughly)? The statements you gave me
indicated there was about 200 bucks in the bank account as of early May. 

> Last week, before I left, traffic had approximately doubled in a
> single week.  This is staggering, because traffic was already huge.

Wow! We are just too damn popular. There is also the phenomenon of induced
demand; the more responsive our servers are the more people use our website.
This often happens when new lanes are added to existing congested highways. The
only real way to stay ahead of the game is to look for more and better ways to
improve the performance : infrastructure ratio (adding car pool lanes and buses
to the highway or hiring somebody to further optimize our server farm set-up
and software). Simply adding more lanes/servers only solves the problem
temporarily. 

> In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
> the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
> from the general public.

I think that half of that would be better spent on hiring a full-time (or a
couple half time) on-site server admins and/or a consultant to further optimize
MediaWiki. 
 
> But to raise money, we have to ask.  People won't give unless they
> know that we need it, and unless they know how incredibly efficient we
> are with the resources that are given to us.

That is why I think that reporting everything we do is so very important. Thank
you for allowing me to help with that. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


	
		
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