[Foundation-l] Celebrating the 2011 campaign

[Erik Moeller]

Hello all,

I just want to send a note to celebrate the enormous success of the
2011 fundraiser. It used to be the case that I was pretty involved in
the annual campaign. For the last two fundraiser, Zack Exley's been
running the show, and I'm enormously impressed by and proud of what he
and his team have been able to accomplish.

When we prepared the budget for 2011-12, I worried that we'd need to
cross new lines in order to generate that much revenue. The 2010
campaign already felt like we were hitting the ceiling of how much can
be raised from a large number of individual donations. Last year, we
were showing Jimmy's face and appeals in many different variations
through much of the fundraiser. We had tried some pretty aggressive
banners, like these ones:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2010_JA1_Banner3_rtl
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2010_JA1_Banner4_US
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2010_JA1_Banner7
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2010_JA1_Banner6

Jimmy certainly didn't crave this level of attention, but he was a
good sport and gave his approval. The campaign was tremendously
successful. But after it was over, we weren't just worried that our
readers might be feeling "Jimmy fatigue", we were all feeling it,
including, I'm sure, Jimmy himself. But it simply remains true that
people strongly identify with him, and that his appeals tend to
motivate people to give more clearly than anything else.

So it was with some anxiety that we approached the 2011 campaign. Zack
isn't the kind of person who makes a grand master plan and then sticks
to it, so until it played out, I really didn't know what the 2011
campaign would look like. Instead of dreaming up plans, though, Zack
and team had spent the months leading up to the fundraiser A/B testing
and experimenting with ways to shorten the fundraiser and reduce our
reliance on a single message/message-bearer. And so they learned tons
of stuff: How long an appeal needed to be to work, what kind of
photo/lighting/background was effective, what payment process would
work, etc. And there was the usual usability testing, optimization of
donations forms, etc.

This, by the way, told us that we didn't need graphically obnoxious
banners -- the simple text on plain white with a photo worked just
fine. (But it needed to be the right kind of photo, and yes, moving it
to the left helped as well.)

And Zack hired storytellers, not an uncontroversial idea at the time,
whose job it would be to go out there and collect the most compelling
personal stories from people in our movement, wherever they may be and
whatever role they may play. This allowed us to share lots of those
stories, both through the testing and then through the actual
fundraiser itself.

There's more -- prior to the campaign, the tech team worked enormously
hard to integrate a new payment system, GlobalCollect. This would
allow us to accept payments not just in all major currencies, but also
through bank transfer, direct debit, and country-specific payment
methods:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en

This, too, in combination with more effectively organized efforts by
hundreds of volunteer translators, meant that banner impressions that
were previously wasted (because people had no way to actually donate)
were now going to turn into support for our work.

All the testing and infrastructure improvements meant that the first
day of the fundraiser was our most effective day ever, by far. And it
meant that we could raise our goal in less time than before. We've
also turned off the banners for registered users in record time, and
for the first time disabled banners for anyone making a donation. But
most importantly it allowed us to share appeals like these:

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/22/who-is-asking-you-to-donate-to-wikipedia-and-the-wikimedia-foundation/

These letters help people understand what Wikimedia is about through
many different voices, metaphors and experiences. The story of an
editor like Sengai Podhuvanar from India, or of a donor like Akshaya
Iyengar, or Ward Cunningham's own story. The storytellers worked hard
to capture the essence of these voices, so that they would be heard
loud and clear.

The team could have chosen to use that time to show more effective
Jimmy banners, or to pick one or two other banners and focus the
entire campaign on them. Instead it sacrificed short term revenue
impact for a more diverse and interesting campaign.

Years ago, we used to worry that people wouldn't/didn't understand
that Wikimedia is a non-profit, that it's created by volunteers, that
it's international/multilingual. Many misconceptions still exist, but
for anyone paying attention, we've demolished them.

I know that everyone involved is enormously proud of working their
butts off for Wikimedia and making this endeavor successful. I am, in
turn, really pleased and grateful with where we are as we enter the
new year. Not only do we have more resources at our disposal than ever
to succeed -- we've firmly established that Wikimedia is a new kind of
organization, a new kind of movement. With more than a million people
joining this year to support us, we're continuing to make history
together.

Thanks to everyone involved in making it happen (including, not to
forget, the participating Wikimedia chapters), and to all who've
supported Wikimedia this year. :-)

Happy 2012,

Erik