*TL;DR summary: I don't want the discussion about fundraising principles to be forgotten for another year until we do the whole thing again in 11 months... We need to finish the discussion about whether it is acceptable for all other values to be made secondary to the goal of maximising fundraising efficiency.*
Now that the 2014 Fundraising campaign has finished and which, according to a WMF blogpost from a week ago, "surpassed our goal of $20 million" (receiving donations from 2.5 million people in 4 weeks) [1], I hope that the fundraising team has had the time to get some well-earned rest and relaxation over the new-year period.
With that "busiest time of year" now over, but with all the discussions still fresh in our mind, I was hoping that the Fundraising team or Executive would have the time to respond to the various concerns that were raised here (and elsewhere) about the theory and practice of WMF fundraising. If responding here isn't appropriate, then at least over on Meta at [[Talk: Fundraising Principles]] where a fair amount of detail has been compiled, particularly by WMF Board of Trustees member SJ [2].
There were some practical/specific questions, including: - why isn't fundraising using the same software to receive bug reports ( phabricator) as everyone else? - why haven't the crowdsourced banner text suggestions been A/B tested? - why were new banners shown to people who had chosen to dismiss previous ones, and why were they allowed take up such a large proportion of the screen/obscure content? - has anyone responded to the Russian community yet to their polite and important question? [This is a non-exhaustive list, of course]
But there were also more fundamental/theoretical questions, including: - what degree of 'urgency' is morally acceptable in a donation request, especially when the financial situation of the WMF has never been healthier/stable? (e.g. threatening phrases like "keep us online and ad-free for another year") - Is the practice of "finishing the fundraiser period as fast as possible by any means" the correct interpretation of the the official fundraising principle of "minimal disruption"? - Is the official fundraising principle of "maximal participation" being adhered to? That principle calls for "empowering individuals to constructively contribute to direct messaging, public outreach..." Does the WMF Board believe this has happened? - Is the current "we don't like asking for money so just give it to us and we'll stop annoying you" approach to fundraising (implied by the final phrase in the final 2014 campaign email "Please help us forget fundraising and get back to improving Wikipedia.") potentially damaging to the Wikimedia brand value, even if it does raise the money in the short term? Lila said that there has been "sentiment analysis" done about this, what was the result?
-Liam
[1] http://blog.wikimedia .org/2015/01/05/thank-you-for-keeping-knowledge-free-and-accessible/ [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_principles