[Foundation-l] The Foundation's mission and fundraising pleas (was Blinky things)

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 12:04 AM, Mark <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Of course, I'm not the best advocate in such situations, because I'm a
> bit wary of the direction things are going myself, so tend to give a
> sort of sheepish shrug in reply, and an explanation that a substantial
> portion of the money (though perhaps no longer the majority) *does* go
> to some of the core servers-and-software operations. I do worry things
> are becoming a bit like a Big Nonprofit, though, even verging onto some
> NGO ambitions, while not being 100% clear to the outside world that
> that's the direction we're going--- the outside world still thinks we're
> struggling to raise money to pay for bandwidth and colo space. I would
> guess the same is true of many Wikipedians as well; I only recently
> realized how much the Foundation has grown in the past 3 years, without,
> as far as I can tell, it ever being an explicit decision to expand
> scope... just sort of happened. Not entirely comfortable with it, but
> eh, I guess that's how things go, and it *does* at least still keep the
> lights on at *.wikipedia.org, which is what I care about.
>
> -Mark
>
>
Now this is a point that I can agree with on the pleas for funding, and I'm
pleased to see it raised.

Coming from the community to work in the professional fundraising
environment of last year's drive, I have no problems defending the banner
usage and testing methods having learned what it takes for our Foundation
to raise money through its largest base: the casual user with no clue of
the Foundation's purpose.  While donations go to support the tech and
support of keeping projects alive, I can agree  that we aren't really
conveying the Foundation's goal of spreading the sum of all human
knowledge, for free, around the world.  A vast amount of expense is not
spent on tech support to achieve this mission, so it would be nice to start
turning the public eye toward this goal and not just keeping the English
Wikipedia online.

This is a PR process, though, and it takes chapters and volunteers as well
as the Foundation to move this focus.  Considering how young Wikipedia and
the Wikimedia Foundation are and how much we've achieved, I'm optimistic
that shifting perception will take years but will work with chapter
building, university programs, and global outreach.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan