Hoi,
Thanks for a thoughtful piece. I will only respond to the first part, the
second part is imho out of scope.
When the WMF wants more funding, it can if it trusts its chapters. The
current funding model has chapters rely totally on the vagaries of the
funding committee. Legally they are distinct and fundamentally they may
want to do things different for reasons of their own. Now they cannot or do
not because of the additional stress involved.
Yes more funding is an easy option. Donations are a constructive way of
securing funding. In the Netherlands they are seen as positive where
endowments are not. Endowments could be used to prove a positive point.
Invest in green energy worldwide with the argument; "we want to offset the
negative impact of sharing the sum of all knowledge and it becomes an
argument that works for us AND works as an investment". It is similar to
the argument why Greenpeace asked Google, Microsoft, Apple to go green.
When we enable fundraising in a meaningful way, we can still have policies
to do better in the world. It is why I am a fan of the Swiss working on
Kiwix. I like that from France they are working on Africa. Enabling and
financing efforts in other countries is what should be seen as important
for cash flush countries. Personally the project I am most proud of is the
collaboration with the Tropenmuseum because of its impact on the Indonesian
Wikipedia (it did not cost us money though).
Yes, we can have more funding. Yes, when something can be funded by another
party it is welcome when it aligns with what we want to do anyway. Yes
people chafe at the text messages during the fundraiser (it is tradition)
and YES we are a force for good and we can make the endowment fund make
that obvious.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 3 February 2016 at 12:06, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I can see the logic in trying for a different funding
source, fundraising
banners and their messaging have been a cause of tension between the WMF
and the community; and asking our readers for money relies on our readers
coming to our desktop sites directly and is at risk in a world where our
data becomes ubiquitous, but increasingly repackaged and presented by
others.
But there are a couple of alternate strategies which I think would serve
us better.
Firstly evolution is better than revolution, and in our case that could
mean shifting the emphasis from annual one off donations to signing people
up for recurring donations. Here in the UK many people open a bank account
in their teens and keep it for life. So if you sign people up for a regular
payment by direct debit you have a revenue stream that will persist for
decades. Short of financial disaster or death people rarely cancel direct
debits to charities. I know WIkimedia UK had a lot of success at signing
people up for direct debits back in 2011 when they were part of the
fundraiser, there has also been some work done on asking former donors to
give again. Shifting from a strategy of asking our readers for donations to
one of asking new and past donors to sign up for a regular contribution
would give us more financial security, less dependence on people using our
sites directly and hopefully open the way for less intrusive messaging that
is more mission aligned and doesn't scare people into thinking that
Wikipedia is under financial threat. It would also be a much smaller step
from our current strategy than one of asking big corporates and grant
givers for money. When a donor who gives 0.0001% of the WMF's income
threatens to stop donating you can ignore the threat and treat their
complaint on its merits. When a donor who gives 0.1% of the WMF's income is
upset they are likely to have inside contacts whose job it is to keep such
donors donating.
Secondly having CC-BY-SA contributions repackaged and reused as if they
were CC0 is a trend that the WMF could resist, first with diplomacy and if
necessary with lawyers. Remember in most languages we aren't currently
under threat from someone creating a rival to Wikipedia, our threat is from
mirrors that present Wikipedia in more attractive ways. Attribution would
undermine the business model of those mirrors who aim for the ads they wrap
our content in to be less intrusive than WMF fundraising, legalese and
editing options. It would keep a proportion of the really interested and
the really grateful clicking through to Wikimedia sites where they can be
recruited as donors of either time or money. It would also realign the
strategy of the WMF with the aspirations of a large part of the community,
those whose motivation comes in part from contributing under CC-BY-SA
rather than CC0.
Regards
Jonathan/WereSpielChequers
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