[Foundation-l] fundraiser suggestion

[Erik Moeller]

2011/1/1 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
> That is the completely wrong attitude. If we cannot reach our target
> with an honest campaign, we should accept that we cannot reach our
> target and make do with less money. We should not lie to and mislead
> our donors.

I fully understand the arguments not to use shorthand like "Wikipedia
Executive Director". It clearly is counter to our desire to be seen as
a movement with multiple supporting organizations, and for Wikipedia
to be understood as a largely self-governing community, and it's of
course Wikipedia-centric. But to suggest that the choice of such
shorthand is tantamount to "lying to and misleading our donors" is,
indeed, irresponsible hyperbole. It's clear that the choice was, in
fact, made to _reduce_ potential confusion of donors about who/what
they're being asked to support.

The different degrees of meaning that we're trying to convey here are
barely noticeable to anyone but Wikimedians themselves, and as such,
the choice of different messaging is just that -- an important choice
about how we want to self-present and ultimately the kind of
understanding of our movement that we want to convey.  Every complex
organization/movement has these kinds of conversations, and it helps
to have them without implicitly or explicitly accusing people of
dishonesty or recklessness. Our self-inflicted branding nightmare
(Wikipedia/Wikimedia/MediaWiki etc.) is one that we'll have to
continue to confront.

Similarly, there are few fundraising techniques that are more
conventional than developing a sense of urgency throughout a campaign
(google fundraising and urgency). The whole point of a fundraising
campaign is, yes, to _urge_ as many people as possible to give within
the timeframe during which all messaging and resources are aligned to
receive donations. So the narrative of every reasonably well-executed
fundraising campaign is to build excitement towards a goal, to
emphasize the importance of making a gift today, etc.

Yes, one can do so to an extent that's misleading and problematic.
But, I haven't seen any instance of misleading messaging in our
campaign. Instead in our most "urgent" appeal there were sentences
like: "Not everyone can or will donate. And that’s fine, because each
year just enough people support Wikipedia with a small donation." This
is an example of careful and deliberate balance in messaging.
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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