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

[James Salsman]

SJ,

Thank you for your reply:

> Fundraising targets have been set to match our projected needs for the
> year, for the past few years.

Does the very recent abandonment of several aspects of the Strategic
Plan, after the July 2012-3 Annual Plan goal was set at $46.1 million,
which itself was substantially reduced after the Chief Revenue Officer
reported that "significant" increases in fundraising would be very
difficult, and without any messaging to donors that those aspects were
being abandoned, represent a breach donors' trust?

Why should donors who believed they were giving to fund the Strategic
Plan in line with the growth of the actual utilization of Foundation
services not feel betrayed by this?

Why should donors who expect the Foundation to prepare for contingency
not feel betrayed by the abandonment of fundraising in the last week
of December, which has over the past several years produced two to
four times as much funding per day than a typical fundraising day?

> As Matt notes, there are many countervailing reasons for us to be moderate
> in our requests of readers and donors....

On one hand, we have anecdotal reports of a handful of opinion pieces
complaining about fundraising, but nowhere near the ridicule and
outrage across the web from last year's campaign. On the other hand we
have actual small donor fundraising amounting to roughly double per
day over last year. Which do you think is more representative of
actual donor sentiment?

> As to your specific concerns, I encourage fleshing them out as part of a
> discussion of next year's budget.  You may find a helpful counterpoint to
> your own anxiety in the discussion there, driven by people who feel that
> our current budget is both too high and not directed at our bottlenecks.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Budget
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_budget#2012-13

I have looked through those, and they do not seem to be a traditional
accounts-based budget, or even a discussion of specific budget line
items. Which specific items on those pages represents the salary ratio
between executive and junior staff?  Which represents the Education
Program staffing level?  Where is the discussion of an endowment that
you mentioned? Where is the recent abandonment of much of the
Strategic Plan discussed on those pages?

Thomas Dalton wrote:

> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics
>
> There is no data on page views on that page...

My first message today included a link to
http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/pageviews which can also be found
by searching various indices for "wikimedia pageviews".