[Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)

[Sage Ross]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi James,
>
> How do you see the fiduciary responsibilities of the board playing into
> fundraising targets? Are you suggesting the Board has a duty to raise as
> much money as possible? I'm also curious why you highlight "deliberately
> slowing fundraising" despite the 32% increase in revenue goals for the
> 12-13 fiscal year. That is an aggressive increase, even if less aggressive
> proportionally than we've seen in prior years.
>

It's clear that this year, the fundraiser could easily raise much more
than the revenue goals, thanks to dramatic increases in banner
effectiveness. It probably wouldn't even "cost" that much in terms of
annoying readers -- not like ~2 months of 100% banners from previous
years.

Given the huge challenges our projects are facing -- at the rate we're
growing, we're never going to come close to the vision of "a world in
which every single person on the planet is given free access to the
sum of all human knowledge -- I do feel a little uncomfortable cutting
the fundraiser so short. It's hard to find effective and responsible
ways to spend that much donor money, but I guess now is the time to
start thinking more ambitiously about future budgets.

-Sage