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

Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher at gmail.com
Wed Jun 7 15:07:28 UTC 2006


> > 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".
>
> This has worked well for a few webcomics artists: make a donation, get
> a wallpaper. Of course, given that all our content is out there
> anyway, people may feel a bit cheated if they don't get something
> exclusive.

I don't think so, because (A) I don't think your average "Wikipedia
rocks, man!"-appreciative donor probably even realises that the other
projects exist. Let's face it, half the Wikipedians don't. ;) Also
they are essentially paying for the convenience. Of course they could
go and get them for free (that's rather the point), but they were
going to donate anyway, right? And hey, we make it so easy for
them...seems like warm fuzzies all round to me.

Besides being able to offer lots of PDFs of featured material from a
range of projects in a range of languages (particularly a few European
ones), we could also offer country/region-specific items to encourage
parochial donations. eg. I could probably dig up 10 wallpaper-worthy
pictures from Australia, to encourage Australian donations.
Definitely the same with the UK, possibly NZ.

I'm not taking it so much from the angle of "let's sell these" as
"let's encourage them to donate a tiny bit more with a feelgood
'freebie' and simultaneously display the breadth and quality of our
coverage which they probably didn't realise existed".

Brianna



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