[Foundation-l] Designs and other fundraiser updates

[Erik Moeller]

Those of you checking Meta may have noticed that there are a few
designs uploaded for feedback from translators:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_drafts
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/benefactors

With the exception of the usual copyrights and trademarks on Wikimedia
logos & marks, these designs are CC-BY-SA. They are still prototypes
that we are hoping to implement using the existing skin/translation
system on wikimediafoundation.org.

Translation has also begun on the key messages of the campaign --
thanks to everyone who is helping. Rand Montoya is managing the
fundraiser this year, and will post more detailed updates as things
progress. Please do feel free to add first feedback to the above
pages.

We're currently planning to launch the fundraiser in early November,
and it will run until late January. The "Ask" of the fundraiser will
be a campaign goal of $6M, which matches the budgeted expenses for the
current fiscal year. It does not include the budgeted contingency,
which we hope to meet through other revenue streams (e.g. business
development). We will count gifts received or committed in this fiscal
year prior to the launch of the fundraiser as "leadership gifts". That
means that the fundraising thermometer will literally be filled up (at
current count by about $2M), and we hope to raise the remaining
difference.

We will also count any major gifts received during the fundraising
period against the thermometer. So, for campaign purposes, we will not
distinguish between small gifts and major gifts. We may special case
any significantly restricted grants received during the time period,
depending on the nature of the grant.

Some of the other important changes this year:

* The fundraiser is supported by our brand-spanking new open source
donation database, CiviCRM. We are also setting up the CiviMail
component to auto-confirm donations with an e-mail "Thank you" and to
email past and future donors.
* We have developed a fundraising agreement for chapters, which
commits us to mutual reporting obligations and commits chapters to
invest 50% of revenue from the online fundraiser in activities agreed
upon with WMF (e.g. hiring a developer, buying a server, obtaining a
legal study, sending us money).
* We are implementing a new version of the CentralNotice campaign
management system that supports scheduling & use of different banners.
We are also hoping to have tracking of where donors are coming from in
place (possibly not quite at launch) to do proper A/B testing on a
number of designs.
* As you can see on the above link, we'll have a bunch of sitenotices
ready to go, and will develop further variants and iterations during
the fundraiser. Other interesting updates (blog, quotes, etc.) are
hoped for and planned. Hopefully basic live reporting will be in place
from the start.
* We'll have neat banners & buttons for blogs ready to go, and we'll
encourage people to remix them.
* Jay & Frank are working on outreach and messaging. For example, we
hope to have some radio public service announcements this year, and
Frank is planning an international outreach event to support the
fundraiser.
* We will have continued major gifts solicitation, now with support of
Rebecca Handler, Head of Major Gifts. Sara Crouse is actively managing
relationships with foundations and ongoing grants development.

There will be no scrolling marquees this year, no third party logos in
the sitenotice, and the notice will continue to be collapsible for
signed in users. There will, as always, be a detailed Q&A, a draft
version of which we'll post publicly later this week. :-)

More soon,
Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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