[Foundation-l] Regarding the Fundraising Banner

[Florence Devouard]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2008/11/5 Victor Vasiliev <vasilvv at gmail.com>:
>> Several things why banner should not be obtrusive:
>> 1) Due to some differences in different cultures some people would
>> decide never to visit Wikipedia rather than to donate :(
>>
>> 2) The previous year banner looked like we asked people to donate us,
>> now we are *begging* them to donate us. The difference between asking
>> and begging is that begging is considered to be a very bad form. Read your
>> message. The first thought that people have when they see that banner is
>> "Oh no, they are also affected by financial crysis". Do we really want
>> to let people
>> think that? (see point one to answer this question)
> 
> Our goal is to actually track how these different messages perform. If
> we find that making the messages smaller does not significantly affect
> donations, we'll make them smaller. If we find that changing the tone
> increases donations, we'll change the tone. We feel that the current
> full-size appeal is an acceptable size for a once a year campaign,
> especially once logged in users can fully collapse it easily. But
> there's no reason to maintain this size if reducing it results in
> equal or greater impact.
> 
> But, we don't want to make any assumptions.Yes, it is meant to attract
> attention and give exposure to the fact that we're a charity which
> relies on people's donations, something most people don't even know
> about us. Attracting sufficient attention and giving sufficient
> exposure to this messaging is a precondition to keeping the site
> operational and taking our mission forward, and core to how Wikipedia
> is currently sustained.


Yeah. And this is true internationnally, not in the USA only.
Attracting attention of donors outside the USA should ALSO be your 
mission. And attracting attention to the fact we are not only an 
american organization should imho, also be your mission. What are you 
doing to do that ?


Ant