[Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - using what we've already got

[Brianna Laugher]

Regarding fundraising. From the recent discussion I've come to the
conclusion that there isn't a fundraising committee, yet, so when
there is one, I'll forward such ideas to it. But in the meantime, here
you go.

I think there is a lot of untapped potential in selling existing WM
items to try and increase the average donation. 'sweeteners'. The
CafePress merch at the moment is a little bit crud. For example some
Wikibooks already offer PDF versions (well, Learning German in English
does, at least). So you could say, "Donate $X and receive a free
e-book to learn German!" Or a "best of" the cookbook. The only extra
cost to the Foundation is the bandwidth.

I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the
Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images
together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers". Since we
have so many I think we could even offer a choice between a few of
these, by theme (eg landscapes, art, sunsets, science-y, insects
having sex). We could set the donation bar for this $5 higher than
whatever the average donation last time was.

I would also like to create some templates and put together some
themes to allow people to easily make their own calendars from Commons
material. And back to fundraising, CafePress does calendars. I don't
really know who controls all that but I assume there'd be no objection
if I/we put some together for that? I imagine they would sell really
well in Nov/Dec. They also do prints and mousepads, gift cards...

Of course the markup on CafePress stuff is not great, it would be
better if could be done inhouse somehow, but I haven't figured out a
good solution to that yet. The "computer wallpapers" and PDF books
stuff exists already though. I guess all you would need is to have the
files on the foundation wiki and when a donation is over the target,
they get some special 'download link'.

So, is what I'm proposing technically feasible, is it a good idea or
will it probably be a lot of fuss for negligible impact, and should I
start trying to find good candidates for such things?

cheers,
Brianna
en|commons:user:pfctdayelise

PS. I also think there is great potential in the Spoken Wikipedia
material, but I haven't figured out what the best format for it would
even be. How many could you reasonably ZIP?