[Foundation-l] fundraiser suggestion

[Thomas Dalton]

On 2 January 2011 01:56, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 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 Wikipedia/Wikimedia thing was harmful to our efforts to get people
to understand how the movement works, but I don't think it got people
to donate under false pretences. My problem is primarily with the
false claims of urgency.

> 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.

I'm familiar with the concept of trying to get people to donate
immediately because they probably won't get around to donating at all
otherwise. That isn't an excuse for lying, though. All the messages
with the word "urgent" in were misleading. You received plenty of
money to keep the sites up and running within the first few weeks of
the fundraiser. There never was any urgency. You were telling people
that if they didn't donate Wikipedia would go offline and that wasn't
true. That is a lie.