[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Erik Moeller]

2011/3/4 church.of.emacs.ml <church.of.emacs.ml at googlemail.com>:
> 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.

Yes, I think we're all in agreement on that. Thanks for raising these
points again. I do want to note that there's been quite a bit of
discussion on some of these issues back in January already. In
response to Domas I wrote these two posts, which included some
possible strategies we could employ to reduce the "annoyance factor".

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/063299.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/063333.html

New ideas are very much welcome, and now's a good time to raise them.

I do think it's important not to conclude too much about other
people's experiences based on your own -- the experience of a heavy
Wikimedia project user of the 2010-11 fundraiser, for example, was
very different from someone who uses one site, in one language, a few
times per month. Some members of the former group experienced the
banners as disruptive/invasive.  Many members of the latter group may
not even have noticed them.

It's IMO very likely the case that for the vast majority of our 400M
or so readers, the experience of the 2010-11 fundraiser was a
uniformly positive or neutral one: either they didn't notice it, or
they did notice it but would characterize it as positive or neutral. I
can't prove that, and I'd love to see better data on that, but I'd be
very surprised if that wasn't true.

In addition to being transparent, honest and true to our values, I
think there are two variables we want to optimize: the percentage of
our audience who experience the fundraiser as positive or neutral, and
the number of donations in support of our cause. I'm optimistic that
we can do better on both counts in 2011-12 -- we don't have to cause
more disruption or annoyance to raise more funds. Wikimedia is an
amazing cause, and if we can tell our story well, we will be able to
motivate more and more people to join it. (Gee, perhaps we should hire
someone for that storytelling job. ;-)

On the target itself, I want to note that the strategic plan numbers
aren't set in stone. The financial targets for the 2011-12 fiscal year
are defined in the annual plan process, which just kicked off. This
plan, when approved by the Board, will decide the target that we're
aiming for in the next fundraiser, and the process is informed by the
most recent projections. It's also very much informed by these kinds
of discussions (versions of which are happening internally all the
time), and it will be, every year. To not continually iterate and
revise our assumptions would be madness.

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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