[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia Announcements] NEWS: Seventh Annual Campaign to Support Wikipedia Kicks Off

[Anirudh Bhati]

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Anirudh Bhati

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Moka Pantages <mpantages at wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 11:20 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] NEWS: Seventh Annual Campaign to
Support Wikipedia Kicks Off
To: press-release at lists.wikimedia.org

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

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 blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415)
839-6885 x 635 moka at wikimedia.org
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