[Foundation-l] Fundraising: Volunteer advertising outside Wikipedia

[mike.lifeguard]

I just saw the "Facebook" keyword, and thought it might be worth pointing
out that I've created a Wikibooks Facebook profile, so if you're on
Facebook, you can become a "fan" of Wikibooks. I haven't really done
anything with it because ads cost money (and I haven't had any good ideas or
time to come up with them), but eventually we'll do more than have it sit
there. If you have suggestions, let me know. Enabling donations through the
profile is probably worth looking at.
</disorganized utterances>
Mike.lifeguard at enwikibooks

-----Original Message-----
From: Tor I. Pettersen [mailto:tor at pettersen.org] 
Sent: March 11, 2008 10:53 AM
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising: Volunteer advertising outside Wikipedia

There are quite a few would-be donators out there who are either too
young or for other reasons don't have a method for donating to the
WikiMedia Foundation.

Quite a lot of these people have websites, blogs, social network
profiles or other web based means for generating advertising income.
In many cases, they don't run advertising today, as they would
generate too little money to matter for their own economy.
Adding a small widget to their websites to run advertising for
charitable contribution to WikiMedia would also be a much easier
process than signing up for an advertising network on their own.

Adding a smidge of social capital, for instance a Facebook
application/website widget that tracks their donations and urges
visitors to "Raise money for Wikipedia today!" would likely increase
adoption.
In cases of websites with established advertising, there are many
solutions for banner rotation/profit sharing that could easily be
modified to donate, for instance, 5% of page views to ads making money
for WikiMedia instead.
It's also psychologically easier for many people to give 5% of future
income from their website than to donate the money when it's in their
hands.
Add Wordpress plugins, and plugins for other publishing systems to
make it even easier.

Ease of use is paramount: Widgets should be in the form of adding a
couple of lines of javascript code to their web pages, or simply
clicking a couple of buttons to install a plugin. No registration
should be required.
Different advertising agencies could be approached, and many would
likely welcome this system to the point of lowering their cut of the
income. We should 'shop around'.

If this system in any way would compromise WikiMedia independence, it
could easily be set up by a trusted third party foundation.
I'd be happy to help out in any way - I have quite a bit of
organization experience, but no direct experience with foundations nor
enough knowledge of the US legal system to do this myself.

Sincerely,
- Tor I. Pettersen