[Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

[Michael Snow]

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jimmy-
>  
>
>>In my opinion, we are going to need another $100,000 of equipment by
>>the end of the year, *and* we can *easily* raise that from donations
>>from the general public.
>>    
>>
>Yes. A $100K fundraising drive makes sense, but at least *some* content  
>should be up - at least the squids serving pages in offline mode. That's  
>because many of our visitors come from Google, and if fundraising is the  
>first thing they see - and no content - they will be turned away.
>
>We should also have realtime updates of funds coming in, this can  
>dramatically increase participation. This isn't that hard to do as PayPal  
>provides an interface for it:
>https://www.paypal.com/en/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/ipn-intro
>
>Lastly, I think hardware alone is not enough. We need a fulltime  
>professional systems administrator with direct access to the machines.  
>Within a $100K budget that is certainly viable. If Brion wants a new job,  
>I'd say he should be immediately offered this opportunity.
>
Since we haven't decided yet what hardware we need, or studied how much 
it will cost, we don't know how accurate the $100,000 figure is. 
However, I'm inclined to take Jimbo's estimate as applying to hardware 
costs alone, not possible employee salaries. Given the growth in our 
traffic, and the fact that our equipment is not yet adequate to handle 
crisis situations, I think we have a lot to do just on the hardware front.

I don't mean to dispute that we are close to the point where paid 
employees are necessary, and I agree that Brion is one of the first 
people we should consider in that regard, if he's interested. (By the 
way, Brion, I'm sorry I don't know how to say this in Esperanto, but 
thanks for your efforts in getting the site back up, and you've 
certainly earned having a day in your honor.)

However, in terms of financial planning, employee salaries are a 
separate consideration from hardware, and not something we can address 
through periodic fundraising drives. Salaries are an ongoing cost, and 
in order to have employees we need to develop a revenue stream that can 
support these costs. The revenue can be from general public donations or 
some other source (grants?), but it must be reasonably reliable. Right 
now, regular donation levels (outside of specific fundraising efforts) 
are not even enough to support the cost of having one employee, even a 
part-time one. People will be a lot more critical of our financial 
management skills if we're asking for money "so we can make payroll".

In many businesses and organizations, employee salaries and benefits are 
the single biggest expense, sometimes more than all other costs put 
together. That may not ever be the case here, since we have the efforts 
of so many fine volunteers. But if we are going to start hiring 
employees, we need to have a good idea that we can pay them on a 
continuing basis. Ideally, Larry Sanger should be the last person this 
project has to lay off for financial reasons.

--Michael Snow
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