[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

Hi,

perhaps now that most of the fundraising stress is over, we can discuss
the direction WMF should be taking in terms of raising funds. While I'm
glad that WMF and most chapters reached or exceeded their fundraising
goals, I feel qualmishly about where we're heading.

In order to meet a very ambitious goal, standards have shifted in the
2010/2011 fundraiser. Previously, we limited our efforts to text
banners. Only if our fundraising goal wasn't going to be met, we used
our Joker card "Personal appeal by Jimmy Wales". Now the standard for an
banner of acceptable efficiency is Jimmy's appeal, and all other banners
have to be of comparable efficiency. (This lead to the fact, that almost
none of the hundreds of text banners created by the community were
used.[1] Not exactly a respectful interaction with Wikimedia's
volunteers, as I already wrote on another mailing list.)

Our banners are getting more annoying every year. We're being more
aggressive. And we're putting words like "Urgent"[2] on the banners and
suggest that we haven't paid our bills for 2010 yet[3] (which is at the
very least misleading).

We simply can't keep up with expectations of a (nearly) exponential
growth in revenue WITHOUT drastically changing the way we raise funds.
Since the changes WMF already implemented are undesirable ("make the
banners bigger and more annoying every year"), I think we either have to
come up with completely new ways to raise funds, or become aware of what
our limits are and at which point WMF needs to stop growing.

I'm not a financial analyst, I'm simply a volunteer concerned about
the direction Wikimedia is heading at.

One comment by a Wikimedia Foundation staff member made me think a lot
about this. He said:
> Asking us to change messaging to something that impacts performance
> costs the Foundation and the movement real money.  These are not
> theoretical decisions: my coworkers keep their jobs based on our
> performance on this fundraiser. Chapters that get grants are funded
> based on the success of this fundraiser. Real people and their
> families lose money based on the performance of these banners.  So
> yeah, we're doing everything we can to maximize the income.

I found that comment to be very disturbing. It makes the Wikimedia staff
look like it is mostly concerned with keeping their jobs,[4] instead of
making Wikimedia's mission succeed. Money is not something inherently
good that we should strive for. It is but a tool, in pursuing our mission.

In that regard, I believe we have to think about how we can ensure that
we're being friendly and respectful towards our readers and donors,
raise enough money, define what 'enough money' is and how all that
affects our mission.

Best regards,
Tobias
User:Church of emacs

[1] Hundreds of banners, contributions of more than 200 volunteers in 24
languages, over a thousand comments:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Messages
[2] e.g.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=20101217_JA022A_US
[3] e.g.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=20101227_JA045_US
[4] I do not believe that they are, but the thought has certainly
crossed my mind after reading the aforementioned quote.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 262 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20110304/ddccf684/attachment.pgp