[Wikimedia-l] Fundraising Testing Update (Friday 6th May) - Hopefully the first of Many

Greetings all, I wanted to give you a heads up about a small test WMF Online Fundraising will be running over this weekend. Following a suggestion from User:Wittylama we are for the first time going to be testing fundraiser banners that are content specific. [1] articles relating to Game of Thrones [2] and only within the United States. The reason being its huge popular appeal and expected spikes of traffic to related articles during the airing of the next episode this Sunday . This is the first test of its kind so we are being reasonable in our expectations. It's hoped that this sort of specific messaging will allow us to engage with our readership a little better through our fundraising and in time provide alternatives to our standard messaging. The banner we are testing [3] has gone through several iterations and we are trying to strike that fine line between engaging with our readers by being content specific but at the same time avoiding being seen as advertising or overt endorsement. There were certainly some more extravagant ideas but we have gone with the more conservative option for now. If you have any ideas you would like to suggest about either our process or banner ideas feel free to contribute on our fundraising ideas page. [4] It is my plan going forward to provide more regular updates about our testing and the results we find from it. What form that takes and where I post those I'll decide in the coming weeks and will update you then. Hope you all have a great weekend. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2015-16_Fundraising_ideas#Relat… [2] http://pastebin.com/M8AjB1tk [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones?force=1&country=US&ba… [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2015-16_Fundraising_ideas -- Seddon *Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation*