[Foundation-l] fundraiser suggestion

[David Gerard]

On 1 January 2011 10:40, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

>> There is no reason that they would have to resort to seeking large donations from
>> extremely wealthy private interests.

> They already do, don't they?


I understand that for the current fundraiser, it was in fact an
explicit goal to seek smaller donations from more people -
specifically to visibly maintain editorial independence for the
projects from the gentle suggestions of any individual large donor.

Of course, if e.g. Microsoft or Google open their chequebooks and give
the Foundation a large untied grant (and both have done so) then we
are most pleased and will happily tell the world that they have done
so and it was very good of them and we are most grateful. But the
point is not to *have* to seek out large donors.

This actually goes against most accepted principles of fundraising,
which follow a Pareto (80:20)-like rule: if your aim is as much money
as possible, seek the large donors, who then recruit the next level of
donors ("I gave $100k, you can give $50k") and so on.

However, the WMF is not like most charities, and just getting as many
bucks as possible by whatever means is not in fact the aim. We
actually have to think about getting the bucks in the *right* way, and
$10 from *lots* of people gets us enough to do our stuff *and* turns
those donors into our co-conspirators on the Mission.


- d.