[Foundation-l] New fundraising site

[Casey Brown]

I was wondering when this was going to be announced. ;-) Very
ambitious plan, some nice ideas, and definitely a better look. :-)

On Dec 25, 2007 5:53 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> We're trying out a new fundraising site:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/en
>
> Big thanks to Frank Schulenburg from the German chapter, who designed
> it, and to Tim Starling and Brion Vibber, who implemented it. Thanks
> also to David Strauss and others who helped along the way. Special
> thanks to PediaPress.com for creating a gift certificate PDF generator
> on very short notice on a pro bono basis. :-)
>
> Obviously this is too late to make a big difference, but parts of it
> will hopefully be re-usable. There's still some work to be done --
> translations, integrating chapter donation methods, etc. -- but I
> think the core of it is sound. I'm copying Frank's rationale for the
> design, and some more thoughts of my own below:

Awesome points and I hope we incorporate these into future fundraisers.

> - - - - -
>
> [Story box:]
>
> People love to hear stories. We have great stories to tell. I'm
> convinced that people are more likely to donate after reading one of our
> stories around Wikipedia. But we are talking about a webpage and
> therefore our stories have to be short and they need to have a clear plot.
>
> Just have a look at the example of Patricio Lorente. The story has four
> parts:
>
> 1) Introduction of Patricio as a normal kind of guy. There seems to be
> nothing unusual to tell about him.
> 2) Something happened in the life of Patricio. Something that changes
> his attitude towards life in general.
> 3) Patricio gets involved with Wikipedia. He begins to do something very
> special and useful.
> 4) You don't want him to stop his very special and useful work just as a
> result of a lack of money, don't you? Donate.
>
> Each story we are telling should have the same or a similar plot, but if
> it's necessary you can change the sequence:
>
> 1) Jaan-Cornelius, one of millions of pupils on earth.
> 3) He does something very special.
> 2) Something happens (terrorist blasts) and Jaan-Cornelius' work
> suddenly proves to be very useful.
> 4) You should donate to give him the opportunity to continue his work
> (properly meaning: donate to keep the servers running)
>
> In the next days and weeks we should collect as many good stories as we
> can. Perhaps another example could be the story of one of our volunteers
> who helps to keep the servers running. Or one of our technical staff who
> cares about the usability of Wikipedia. Or one of our volunteers of the
> e-mail support team...
>
> We should jump at the chance and try to involve the communities. We all
> know: Wikipedians love to get involved. They strongly dislike not being
> asked. Let's have a posting at the village pump, illustrate our new
> fundraising concept and ask the community members to tell us "their"
> Wikipedia stories.

This is good, like you said we can solicit some more stories but we
should also use some of the things we already have.  I've compiled a
short list of some feedback-related pages at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cbrown1023/Feedback>, but I'm
sure there are more.  We really need to start collecting all of this
good feedback so we can use it later. :-)  One of the key pages from
that list that would fit into this "story box" idea is "Success
stories" <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Success_stories>.

> [Donate box:]
>
> The fastest route to donate: let visitors enter the amount and the
> currency on the _first_ page. Enable them to "donate now". Nobody likes
> to click through four or five webpages before he gets the sign to
> "donate now". Let's keep things simple.
>
> As tax deductibility is a key interest for most of our donors we provide
> a short text which points out that the Wikimedia Foundation is a tax
> exempt charitable corporation. This part of the webpage is planned to be
> variable. The dutch version should have a notice like "If you want to
> deduct your donation from your taxable income please donate to Wikimedia
> Netherlands".

I really like this. :-)  The only thing we'd need to do is get the
chapters involved themselves (they probably know their country, its
laws, their language, and their status best ;-)).

> [Additional donation methods:]
>
> What's the most common way to donate in the Netherlands? or in France?
> At this part of the page we can provide information about how to deposit
> money in our bank account, how to send a cheque, and so on...
>
> That means: we really need information about the most common payment
> options in each country. Perhaps Delphine as a chapter coordination can
> help with that.

Same comments as directly above, chapters should prove very helpful in
this and this is a good plan.

> - - - - -
>
> I might find some time over the holidays to work on some additional
> stories for the site. But if you have any ideas yourself, feel free to
> post them, to me or to the list. :-)
> Technically, the entire design is served through a wiki, which
> hopefully will make it reasonably straightforward to make changes as
> needed.
>
> Any feedback is appreciated. :-)
>
> Happy holidays to all!
> Erik

and to you too! :-)

>
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-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

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