[Wikimedia-l] compromise?

[Richard Symonds]

I'm on a train so this will be brief... But let's say we do what you
suggest, and it only raises 90% of what is needed. What then?

I've had to pare back WMUKs budget in the past few weeks to what the FDC
granted. It's difficult enough to do on a smaller budget, I dread to think
how the WMF would do it if they had to. A large organisation lucky enough
to have a good income should use that income to plan ahead, rather than
using fundraising as an artificial cap. You do raise good points on some
subjects though - eg workers remuneration, which is generally poor in the
US - but it's very difficult to discuss that via a public mailing list.
On Dec 28, 2012 10:12 PM, "James Salsman" <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I'm not quite sure what you mean by multivariate analysis
>
> I mean as in the tests done May 16, September 20, and October 9
> reported at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough
> without adjusting the best performing pull-down delivery combined
> banner/landing page from the beginning of this month (although I don't
> think we will need the one that follows vertical scrolling. It may
> produce 30% but that will be nothing if the remaining ~300 appeal
> messages are tested, unless they don't fit the lognormal distribution
> that they appear to.)
>
> > That would be complex, and could be a disaster...
>
> What are the possible failure modes?
>
> On Dec 28, 2012 9:46 PM, "James Salsman" <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > How about for the April fundraiser, instead of setting a dollar value
> > goal, we agree to use multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing to
> > optimize the messaging from volunteer submissions in advance, then run
> > the whole thing for a fixed time frame, say three weeks, and then use
> > the actual amount raised to decide whether salaries should be
> > competitive with area tech firms, whether Fellowships should be
> > jettisoned, how much personnel to put into the Education Program and
> > engineering, and how much of a reserve to invest, preferably with low
> > risk instruments which pay above the rate of inflation?
>
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