[Wikimedia Announcements] NEWS: Seventh Annual Campaign to Support Wikipedia Kicks Off

[Moka Pantages]

      Seventh Annual Campaign to Support Wikipedia Kicks Off

/Yearly fundraising campaign sets goal of $16 million and invites 
readers to become editors /

SAN FRANCISCO, November 15, 2010 --- The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the 
non-profit behind Wikipedia, today announced the launch of its annual 
fundraising campaign. This year's goal is to raise $16 million so that 
Wikipedia and its sister projects can remain freely available to people 
around the world. The $16 million raised in this campaign will help fund 
the Foundation's total 2010-11 operating budget of $20.4 million. And 
for the first time this year, the campaign will also invite readers to 
donate time as well as money, by joining the Wikimedia community of 
volunteer editors. Once the financial goal has been met, the campaign 
will encourage Wikipedia's nearly 400 million monthly readers to become 
editors.

"Over the past 10 years, Wikipedia has become a vital public resource 
for hundreds of millions of people. We've come to depend on it being 
there for us -- free to use, without any bias or interference, and 
without advertising," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. "If you can 
afford to make even a small donation, that's important. You're helping 
to keep Wikipedia available not just for yourself, but for others 
--kids, people in poor countries-- who themselves can't afford to donate."

The 2010 campaign seeks to raise the funds needed to preserve Wikipedia, 
the world's fifth-most-popular site, as a space for the free and open 
sharing of human knowledge. As Wikipedia continues to grow in size and 
readership, it needs to increase spending on servers and bandwidth, and 
to invest in supporting the continued health and diversity of the 
editing community.

"Wikipedia is the people's encyclopedia: it's written by ordinary 
people, and it makes sense that ordinary people would pay to support 
it," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director. "Having a broad base of many 
donors from everywhere around the world is important to us: it means the 
encyclopedia is free to evolve to meet the needs of its readers, rather 
than being distorted or thrown off course by special interests. I'm glad 
so many people appreciate Wikipedia, and I'm delighted when they choose 
to support it financially."

In 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation raised just over $8 million from more 
than 240,000 individual donations (up from 139,000 donations during the 
2008 campaign). The average donation in 2009 was $33, and donations came 
in from over 100 countries.

The 2010 campaign will run through January 2011, with notices at the top 
of pages on Wikipedia and its sister sites, asking readers for their 
support.

Make a donation now:

    * http://donate.wikimedia.org

Follow us on:

    * http://identi.ca//wikipedia
    * http://identi.ca//wikimedia
    * http://twitter.com/wikimedia
    * http://twitter.com/wikipedia

Follow or share your thoughts with the tag #keepitfree 
<http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23keepitfree>

or

Facebook.com:

    * http://www.Facebook.com/Wikipedia

*About the Wikimedia Foundation*

    * http://wikimediafoundation.org
    * http://blog.wikimedia.org

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization which operates 
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, 
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation 
receive 398 million unique visitors per month, making them the 5th most 
popular web property world-wide (Sept, 2010). Available in more than 270 
languages, Wikipedia contains more than 16 million articles contributed 
by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in 
San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 
501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.

*Contact*:

    Moka Pantages 
    WikimediaFoundation.org <http://WikimediaFoundation.org> 
    blog.wikimedia.org <http://blog.wikimedia.org> 
    +1 (415) 839-6885 x 635 
    moka at wikimedia.org 

(To UNSUBSCRIBE from this mailing list, please reply to this note with 
'UNSUBSCRIBE' in the subject line
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/attachments/20101115/b2cbadc1/attachment.htm