[Foundation-l] Rethinking fundraising (2): Storytelling

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 10/8/07, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
[snip]
> If we take these stories, get images, and re-write them into some
> combined campaign called "Wikipedia:Our Story" published on some shiny
> new site, that would be a mistake.
>
> The people donating $3 to wikipedia aren't the same people donating to
> the MacArthur Foundation. Well, maybe some are, but not most.

We don't actually know that... We don't really know a lot about our
donors and I think thats a real problem. (Although we do know the mean
and median donations are a a fair bit more than $3 ... but that's not
your point).

I also think we shouldn't limit ourselves to any one donor base. ...
and certainly not anyone who is already donating to charities.

Anecdotaly, many people I encounter who *I* consider good potential
donor material (young-middle age, tech savvy, household incomes
soundly in the 33 and even 35% federal income tax brackets, and who
*do* donate to things like macfound) are often completely unaware or
misinformed of Wikimedia's non-profit status. To quote someone I spoke
to recently: "Wikipedia, you know thats not non-profit anymore right?
The founder Jimmy Wales ... wikia... search.." 0_o Easily corrected,
but only if someone is actively correcting it.