[Foundation-l] Quick thoughts on fundraising

[Delirium]

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Now, one might make an argument that unobtrusive ads are preferable over  
>frequent obtrusive donation campaigns. Right now I have no strong opinion  
>either way, but based on the data available to me, I believe that a high- 
>profile fundraising campaign could be over fairly quickly with high  
>returns.
>  
>
I can't make any claims to be a representative user, but I personally 
find these sorts of things *really* annoying.  When I'm trying to read 
an encyclopedia article, I don't want a "give us money!" link at the 
top, especially one with exclamation marks in it!  If it were some sort 
of big bar thing, that'd be so much the worse, especially since it 
doesn't go away when I actually *do* give money.  Letting me hide them 
would be nice.

I also think if these things become a regular occurance, you're going to 
see the donations rate get lower each time.  People are wiling to donate 
rapidly for exceptional circumstances (like the k5 fundraiser, or the 
first Wikimedia fundraiser), but using them as a normal revenue stream 
doesn't sound that promising, imo, since it makes it sound like we're 
perpetually doing "emergency" fundraising, which starts to sound like 
"crying wolf" after a while.

-Mark