[Foundation-l] Oct 22 to January 3 Fundraising Report

[Erik Moeller]

On 2/4/08, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, that has actually been brought up in many other venues as well
> and I support such an idea.  I think the German and French pages
> currently do that too: <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/de>
> and <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/fr>.

Yep, certainly localized & customized pages are a good thing. Chapters
are very much encouraged to drive this process.

There's obviously a tension between having a standardized corporate
design for the fundraising page, and the ability to customize it to
specific needs. I think the current system is already reasonably good
at striking a balance, and can be refined further to allow for things
like custom videos, stories, etc.

I want to add that WMF is still, highly unusually for a non-profit,
operating without a Head of Development leading this process. The
hiring process for this role is ongoing, and we've shortlisted a
couple of very good candidates.

> > The point was also made that matching donations came too late in the
> > campaign to be as effective as they might have otherwise been. This
> > might have been unavoidable because of the individual donor though.
> > There is no mention in the report of matching donations?

The timing of the donation made it impossible to phase it in earlier -
and given that it overlapped with a general boost around New Year's,
it's hard to tell what the impact on donor behavior was. But we'll
certainly continue to, *cough*, play with matches to see what effect
they might have. ;-)

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate