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Summary[edit]

Introduction[edit]

The majority of funding for the Wikimedia Foundation comes from individual donors all around the world. These donations allow us to provide the world-class technology infrastructure that supports 20 billion monthly views to Wikipedia and its sister projects, protect free knowledge globally through legal and advocacy efforts, and support the incredible volunteer editors that have built 61 million articles across more than 300 languages. This year, the Foundation is focusing heavily on improvements to our products and technology, particularly the needs of experienced editors. You can learn more about priorities for the Wikimedia Foundation in detail in the FY 2023-2024 annual plan.

To fund these efforts, the fundraising team will run its annual Q2 English fundraising campaign (for non-logged in users) in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Funds raised from these countries account for more than 50 percent of all funds per year and this is an important moment to invite readers to support Wikimedia's mission. To prepare for the campaign, the fundraising team will continue the yearly practice of running limited "pre-tests" between July and November, to ensure optimal systems and banners, in collaboration with volunteers.

As a brief recap, in December 2022, the English Wikipedia community ran a Request for Comment that underscored the importance of the Foundation's fundraising team working closely with the movement on banner messaging. The team kicked off a collaboration process that resulted in the campaign featuring more than 400 banners that came from the co-creation process with volunteers. The revenue performance of the banners declined significantly last year and resulted in a longer campaign with readers seeing more banners than previous years. The fundraising team learned a lot through the collaboration process and is eager this year to build on this work with volunteers to develop content that will successfully invite donors to support our mission. We aim to reach fundraising targets in ways that minimize the number of banners shown to limit disruption and resonate with readers and volunteers.  You can read more background on last year's campaign, in the background section.

Collaborating on messaging with volunteer stakeholders is key to the fundraising team. We will use the co-created banner message that ran in December 2022 to kick off the pre-tests and work together with volunteers on new ideas for this year's campaign.

Background[edit]

Background on collaboration in December 2022

Background on collaboration in December 2022[edit]

As 2022 came to a close, a Request for Comment (RfC) on English Wikipedia proposed changes to the messaging of year-end fundraising banners. The Wikimedia Foundation accepted the guidance provided by the close of the RfC, and established a co-creation page to seek volunteer input on banner messaging from community members. Throughout the fundraising campaign, the team posted regular updates to the page.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the banner co-creation process in 2022. In the January campaign recap, we shared more information on how we ran a different kind of campaign with new banner messages that were created together with Wikimedia volunteers.

The English campaign raised significantly less than the previous year. Overall, we saw a $10 million decline in banner fundraising year over year despite showing more banners to our readers. There were tradeoffs to running lower-performing messages in 2022. Over the years, the team has worked to limit the disruption to the reading experience by making the campaigns more efficient, reducing the number of days the banner campaign ran and limiting the number of banners readers see. In December 2022, we ran a longer campaign and showed 49% more banner impressions than the previous year. Despite these changes, we still raised 30% less than the previous year. While we made gains through our work together, the donation rate was still significantly less than the previous year.

Thanks to constructive conversations and commitment from community stakeholders, we made considerable gains in banner performance throughout the 2022 English campaign, following the initial low banner performance at the start of the campaign. Here are some highlights from co-created banners:

  • A new 2022 founder appeal direct from Jimmy Wales
  • The theme of reciprocity
  • More clarity around the role of the Foundation and the importance of donating
  • Time-sensitivity to highlight the importance of this fundraising moment
  • Adjustments to the design and usability of close options in our mobile banners
  • 450+ banners tested
  • A closer relationship with our volunteers who are interested in fundraising messaging

The team is committed to building on the progress made throughout December to improve this year's campaign together. We're excited to kick off the collaboration much earlier, in our typical Q1 pre-testing period, so that we have time to test and optimize, along with volunteers, before the end of year push.

Background on Foundation planning and transparency in 2023

Background on Foundation planning and transparency in 2023[edit]

We recognize that there were concerns about matters outside of fundraising banners expressed in the 2022 RfC and elsewhere. Here are a few brief highlights to share on our wider approach to planning and transparency in 2023. To learn about priorities for the Wikimedia Foundation in detail, please see the FY 2023–2024 annual plan.

  1. Sharing more detailed information about how funds are spent.
    This year, the Foundation's annual plan offers detailed budget breakdowns, including across our four goals for this year, of which our technical infrastructure is the largest (48.7%). We also shared more information about how specifically the Wikimedia Foundation supports the Wikimedia projects this year, including:
    • 23% of our budget ($39.7 million, about 26% of staff) to evolve and maintain features and functionality of the projects, such as developing new software, adapting the sites to new form functions, site security, and maintaining our servers and tech stack
    • 26% of our budget ($46.4 million, about 30% of staff) to build analytics and machine learning services that support contributors, create and deliver analytics, and enable data driven decision making through our APIs and metadata systems.
    • 20% of our budget ($35.1 million, about 12% of staff) to supporting affiliates and volunteer communities around the world
    • 9% of our budget ($16.6 million, about 10% of staff) on legal and public advocacy, such as fighting censorship, defending trademarks, defending threats to free knowledge, safeguarding Wikimedia's reputation, and ensuring legal compliance
    • $17.9 million of our budget split between fundraising, human resources, financial, and legal support (12% of our budget combined and about 13% of staff.)
  2. Slowing of Foundation growth.
    The Foundation's annual plan budget is flattening compared to prior years. As discussed in the annual plan, we have made reductions in both non-personnel and personnel expenses to achieve this.
  3. Engaging more closely with existing editors, and prioritizing their needs in our plan for this year.
    On the 14th of April, Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann released her listening tour letter after her first nine months in her new role. It recognized the need for more attention to longstanding challenges like technical debt, the importance of improving the Foundation's relationship with English Wikipedia, and overall, having a clearer vision for how to responsibly use donor-funded resources to support Wikipedia and the sister projects. The annual plan for fiscal year 2023-2024 follows through on a number of these things, where work has already begun. Specifically within the Technology and Product goals, you will see a focus on working closely with editors and editors with extended rights (admins, stewards, patrollers, and moderators of all kinds, also known as functionaries) to improve their experiences. The Foundation will also work on providing decision makers from across the Wikimedia Movement access to reliable, relevant, and timely data, models, insights, and tools that can help them assess the impact (both realized and potential) of their work and the work of their communities, enabling them to make better strategic decisions. Finally, exploring strategies for expanding beyond our existing audiences of consumers and contributors, in an effort to truly reach everyone in the world.
  4. Sharing more information about financial and operational management.
    We've published a series of Diff posts about our approach to hiring, compensation (also in the annual plan), human resource guidelines, financial and governance practices, and most recently, inviting community input on our priorities for next year. We will continue this series in the new fiscal year.
    This year, we've taken the extra step of publishing salary data for our CEO Maryana Iskander and Chief of Product & Technology Selena Deckelmann in our annual plan, to supplement the executive salary data released each year in our form 990.
Building on collaboration so far in 2023

Building on collaboration so far in 2023[edit]

Since the English campaign in late 2022, the fundraising team and local volunteers have made a lot of improvements in the collaboration process for campaigns so far in 2023 in Sweden, Japan, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Brazil.

A few highlights of approaches we've tried since January to improve the fundraising collaboration process:

  • 8 on-wiki collaboration spaces (local language wikis, Meta-Wiki, village pumps)
  • Movement strategy forum
  • 7 live open conversations
  • Partnered with 4 affiliates (affiliates were involved in the creation of the community collaboration pages, gave input on banner and email messaging, and attended community calls)
  • Direct individual engagement with local volunteers

A few key takeaways from the campaigns so far in 2023:

  • The timing of early collaboration ahead of the campaign is critical to ensuring a strong campaign launch.
  • Continued partnership with local affiliates is valuable to ensure quality localization and open up engagement spaces with volunteers.
  • Minimal messaging concerns raised from most banner campaigns.
  • Minimal interest/attendance in fundraising dedicated meetings, joining existing spaces is valuable to increase participation.
  • Messaging ideas from Mexico's community conversation were implemented in banners.
  • Japan campaign had 5 participants who collaborated on an improved translation of Jimmy's new December message.
  • Local payment methods were discussed on the Swedish collaboration page.
  • Czech Republic volunteers asked questions to understand the campaign (It was the first time we ran a fundraising campaign in the Czech Republic).

Collaboration spaces[edit]

To increase information sharing and collaboration opportunities for the next campaign, the team is eager to engage in multiple spaces. Here are a few initial ideas. We welcome more input on channels for collaboration!

Many ideas shared by volunteers on the English campaign co-creation page last year were incorporated into banners, such as messages around the theme of reciprocity, clarity on the role of the Foundation, and a new appeal from Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales. We're eager to build from that process to work together to find ways to improve the banners this year. Throughout the first quarter of the fiscal year (July-September), the team runs limited pre-campaign tests ahead of the fundraising campaign. Similar to last year, it won't be feasible to test every message idea shared on this page as there may be more iterations than space in the "pre-test" period, but we will continue to try ideas shared in this collaboration space as well as other new spaces we're setting up this year.

As is regular practice for the fundraising team, the first tests of the new fiscal year in July will be technical systems and payments tests. For these tests, we'll use the same banner message that was co-created in December. No new language will be introduced in the first tests.

Starting in August, we'll kick off messaging testing. We welcome your ideas! There were many messages tested in December and we'd like to revisit some of these to try different combinations of the variety of themes explored last year to reach our fundraising targets in ways that limit the disruption of campaigns and resonate with our community of volunteers and readers.

Co-created banner message from 2022 (with light edits to remove the "year-end" message):

Wikipedia is not for sale.

A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Wednesday, June 14, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.

When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and 12 other free knowledge projects, it meant that we could preserve our core values: neutral, high quality information, not outrage and clickbait. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

There are also many powerful lines that emerged from the co-creation page in December, and we hope to iterate and repeat some of these messages. Here is a sample and we'd love your input into what you like or would want improved.

Add your ideas here![edit]

Please share your ideas here! These can be iterations on the message above, new sentences, inspiring words, themes, or new concepts to try. We'd love to use this space to plan out the first message tests of the year together. Thank you for any ideas you'd like to share!

Thank you for your ideas about how fundraising could be an opportunity to encourage more people to edit. Over the past year, the fundraising and Product teams have been experimenting with ways to do just that. After readers make a donation, they land on our “Thank You” page, which thanks them for their donations. The team ran an experiment in the fundraising campaigns in Latin America, India, and South Africa where we added a call-to-action on the “Thank You” page to create an account and start editing. Here’s an example of the invitation to edit on the donor thank you page. Since the initial experiments in LATAM, India, and South Africa, we have rolled out this invitation to edit on the thank you page out to donors in those countries, as well as France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands and Sweden! You can read more about the experiments here. Increasing editors impacts the existing volunteer community so we’re excited to have this conversation together here. The invitation to edit has not yet been rolled out to the English campaign, but the team is certainly interested in exploring that idea. We’d love to hear from volunteers on the idea of experimenting with including this CTA to the thank you page, potentially in a few brief “pre-tests” as a starting point to learn about the impact of inviting donors to edit. What do you think?
Adding @SJ who joined in on this topic last year. MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, I'm in favour of encouraging donors to volunteer in this way. Please roll out the new donation thank-you page when you can. However, I don't think volunteering is an add-on, secondary to the goal of getting readers to donate, and just one step above filling out a survey on donor demographics. I think it's (like finances) critical to the continued existence of Wikimedia and (unlike finances) far below the level it needs to be at. — Bilorv (talk) 16:54, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Seconded. We need editors, not money. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:54, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is, alas, very clearly only half true. Both are needed - and the use of banners (and reader and community tolerance thereof) is a limited resource. The tests should try both, but this can be a case where being okay at both is worse than good at one. We know we can raise money through banners - acquiring volunteers who stay for more than 1-2 edits through banners is less confirmed. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's as may be, but consider that recruiting new editors is also fundraising, in a very real sense. If I tried to calculate the value of the time that I have spent on Wikipedia, I suspect it would run easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth, if not more, depending on the exact calculation method. That's far more than I would have ever directly donated to it. We need volunteers much more than we need cash. Money doesn't do NPP or AFC or check for copyright violations or do any of those things we actually need involved volunteers to do. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I just wanted to chime into this interesting discussion with the factoid that we have already worked in a small mention of editing to a banner from last year’s campaign:

There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts.

But I’d be curious to explore this theme further. Here’s some sample language we’ve developed, what do y’all think?

  • Wikipedia relies on volunteers: If Wikipedia and its sister sites are useful to you, support us with a donation or support us with an edit.
  • From the beginning, Wikipedia has been a volunteer effort. The articles you read are written by volunteers, and the non-profit that supports our projects relies on voluntary donations. Every edit counts, every donation counts.

It will always be challenging to position two calls to action in a single appeal; but we know that most readers don’t actually end up making a donation, and it would be gratifying to get more from our banners and drive actions we need for our projects to thrive.

Would people be interested in seeing some concepts around that? SPatton (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Extended content
Extended content
  • Major Changes Needed Wikipedia has a serious reputation problem with a massive segment of the population. Many of the current affairs and public figure pages use highly biased secondary sources, which, in turn, leads to highly biased Wikipedia pages. Because of the almost universal bias in the secondary sources and academic fields, this bias has propagated through to create an equivalent bias on Wikipedia. At this point I can hear many of you shouting “no,” or “that’s not true,” at your screens right now, but you need to remember - perception is reality. I know from personal experience how frustrating it is to try to improve a Wikipedia entry only to get brigaded by established editors who mass-revert any changes to make sure that no one person reverts more than three times, enabling them to circumvent the rule on edit warring. The result being that a massive segment of the population feels that Wikipedia is horrible at best, and complete trash at worst. This ties into the fundraising issue because if any of you think that someone from that 50% of the population is going to contribute to Wikipedia as long as this continues, you’re fooling yourselves. The point being that Wikipedia needs to take a step back and review every aspect of how it develops its content, its source requirements, and find a way for Wikipedia to deliver accurate and completely factual information without ANY interpretation of the the information at all. It might make the material more “dry”, however it would then leave it up to the reader to decide how they want to interpret the information without spoon-feeding an ideology to them. Steven Britton (talk) 23:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Scbritton: I am highly sceptical that any source amending process would manage to, say, halve the % of the population that thinks our current affairs/public figure articles are biased. Accusations of our varying biases are frequently made with reference to fully known statements without any of that pesky interpretation.
    But beyond that suspicion, "Wikipedia" doesn't review its policies - the editors that make it up do. So if you think our sourcing rules are inherently flawed, we can't just will them into being - you need to start a discussion over at VPI to find improvements that don't cause more issues than they solve.
    More relevantly, this isn't really the place - the WMF has no control over non-legal content policy so the only bit that could be relevant to them would be the area of "should we target our fundraising banners to those inclined to trust us, and if so, how?". To some degree I guess we do that already - those who think we are liars all, probably don't think we've given them $3 worth of value. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:26, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sadly, based on what've you've said here, it sounds to me like Wikipedia is, and will remain afflicted with Groupthink for the foreseeable future. Note that this isn't an attack against you personally; I'm just stating that I highly doubt any discussion I begin will be met with anything other than hostility at this point. Steven Britton (talk) 02:31, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honesty

The WMF has a legal and moral duty to be honest with potential donors. I am particularly disappointed by this news. Of course, equality is a good thing and those are all worthy causes. However, any donor finding out that their contributions, begged on the implication that our servers were about to stop spinning, overflowed into unrelated organisations would feel shocked, misled and unlikely to donate again. Certes (talk) 15:34, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes; I was quite disappointed with that report. The WMF should be honest where its money is actually going, otherwise it's deceptive. I dislike the WMF for other reasons (see my first userbox and my comment above), and I guess I'll just have to add this to the list. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:30, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts

I hope this helps.—S Marshall T/C 16:23, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And does the WMF even need the money? Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First round of new banners incorporating copy suggestions[edit]

Hi all. As promised, here are some variants we’ve worked up based off the suggestions on this page to talk about disinformation and the role of Wikipedia in ensuring accurate information; as well as the ‘perfectly imperfect, human nature’ of our work.

I’d like to start by testing these as replacements for the ‘middle part’ of our banner, keeping the opening lines and final call to action intact, and then work the language up based off results.

Very happy for any suggestions or critiques. Thanks to @Folly Mox, @Ganesha811, @Nosebagbear and @Bilorv in particular for inspiring this batch, with more to come! Thanks for your time. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I note that banners have already been rolled out for unregistered viewing. Here's what I saw (red=problem per previous comments by various editors, green=suggested addition):
Wikipedia is not for sale. A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales is it though?
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Wednesday, August 16, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. – It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a non-profit organization, there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground. By donating to the Wikimedia Foundation, you can help give them more money to throw around in off-topic grants or give "golden parachute" pensions.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 23:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Although the text about grants and parachutes seems unlikely to make the final cut, the point about donating to the Wikimedia Foundation is important. I don't see that anywhere in the proposed banners. Although it's not explicitly stated, donors might naively expect that clicking the "Donate" link in the sidebar headed "Wikipedia" would donate to Wikipedia. We should clarify that the money goes directly to the WMF, which spends most of its income in other areas. Certes (talk) 10:42, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the pensions etc. point was a joke, but keeping Wikimedia Foundation in there is important. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 11:54, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wait which ex-WMF staff are collecting pensions paid for with Foundation funds? Is that even a real financial thing with US non-profits? Folly Mox (talk) 01:35, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I see you were talking about excessive severance pay. I thought that got fixed last year? Folly Mox (talk) 01:53, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Still leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 11:49, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.

It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together, for no other reason than that they want to help create a free repository of quality information. That's something we all need, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a non-profit organization, there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Feedback on Banner 1
What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?

  • perfect.. I also happen to believe the use of I is wrong!
Uncle Bash007 (talk) 13:42, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand your comment. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 13:51, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.

I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites because at its heart, Wikipedia belongs to you. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia, turn it into their personal playground, and cut you out. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Feedback on Banner 2
What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.

When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned a source of neutral, high quality information. In the age of AI, this vision matters more than ever. As the internet floods with machine generated content, Wikipedia becomes even more valuable for people looking for information they can trust.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Feedback on Banner 3
What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?

Copy-edited banners

Banner 1

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this one-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we would hit our goal in a couple of hours. Three dollars is all I ask.

It is hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different: not perfect, but also not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It is written by everyone, together, because we want to help create a free repository of high-quality information. That is something we all need, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a nonprofit organization, there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Banner 2

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

[same as Banner 1]

I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, because at its heart, Wikipedia belongs to you. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia, turn it into their personal playground, and cut you out. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to high-quality information – something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Banner 3

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

[same as Banner 1]

When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned a source of neutral, high-quality information. In the age of artificial intelligence, this vision matters more than ever. As the internet is flooded with machine-generated content, Wikipedia becomes even more valuable to people looking for information they can trust.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Banner 4

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

[same as Banner 1]

When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned it as a home for high-quality, neutral information. I didn't realize that it would become a cornerstone of online education for readers around the world. Our nonprofit status helps us focus on providing that high-quality information for everyone – without any risk that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Comments are welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:32, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.

When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned it as a home for high quality, neutral information. I didn't realize it would become a cornerstone of online education with readers around the world. Our nonprofit status helps us focus on providing high quality information for everyone without any risk that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!

Feedback on Banner 4
What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?

Off-topic.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • It's my genuine hope that someday WMF takes in almost no money every year, and having starved the cancer, all of you go away permanently. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:06, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Chris troutman, there are more productive places and times to hate on the WMF. This is a page with a specific collaborative function and these comments are just disruptive. Take it elsewhere. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Ganesha811: I disagree. Lesser editors have decided to influence WMF to take in fewer ill-gotten gains rather than watch WMF rob the readers blind. Not me; I'm calling for the end of all fundraising and the abolition of the WMF. I see no reason to accept the dominant narrative. In the interest of fairness to donors, I prefer disrupting this sham. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Draft letter to the WMF[edit]

I have drafted a letter to the WMF outlining these concerns, among others. I invite other editors to sign it, or make modifications. If you are interested, see User:Edward-Woodrow/complaint, or discuss it on the talk page. Cheers, Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 23:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just duplicating my message from below Edward's letter, as it was indicating speaking on behalf of an audience I don't believe it had the demonstrated support for:
This is not a "we the undersigned" message. This message gives a "many" without demonstrating any proof that it indeed represents the consensus of the community on the statements within. I dispute almost every statement within it. I oppose the hyperbole given by using Certes' phrasing here, I oppose that the amended fundraising banners are misleading users, I oppose that expenditure on projects other than English Wikipedia using a non-hypothecated sum of money is flawed or the golden parachutes are fundamentally flawed, I oppose that I feel "ashamed" of the WMF despite my myriad disagreements over the past 5 years and I firmly oppose the concept that we topple down the rabbit holes implied by both tone and content within this message. The only true community open letter complaint since 2018 I'm aware of is the meta:COLOR which came after a year of attempted resolution and clearly demonstrated community concerns (to the tune of a global consensus) and zero effective action to remediate the concerns. And it still evidenced every statement and didn't indicate support beyond what it could prove. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indian emails[edit]

I had posted the Indian emails earlier on this page, per samples provided on Meta:

User:Nosebagbear thought that Emails 1-3 seem fine, email 4 is a bit odd. I agree in part, and disagree in part and would be interested in further opinions.

So, first the good news: the Indian Emails 1 and 2 are indeed very good. There is one sentence in email 3 I would like to see scrapped:

Now, email 4 (sent to everyone who hasn't donated after the first three emails, I presume) is completely inappropriate in my opinion and should not be used in future campaigns anywhere (it will already have run in India). I find the following passages objectionable:

Maybe Jimbo Wales would like to comment, since he sent them? Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 23:50, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Everything I know about Indian English I learned from people asking questions at the Teahouse, which might explain why I'm so confused these emails don't open with Respected Sir/Madam.
I guess my primary concern is that, after an email titled "Our final email", containing text like "time is running out", "if you've been waiting for "later", this is your moment", and "this might be my last chance to request"— is then followed by a further email. If I had read that third email and then received a fourth one, I'd expect myself to feel badgered and lied to, and on balance more likely to tap "unsubscribe" than "donate", even if I had previously been considering donating. Folly Mox (talk) 02:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Important context shared below obviates my primary concern, noting for the record. Folly Mox (talk) 04:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed on these objections. Seems like the fourth email should be scrapped moving forward. Its whole tone is inappropriately desperate. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:43, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for this discussion on our India email series. I want to clarify that donors did not receive all 4 emails. Anyone who received email 3 did not receive email 4. I realize that was important context that was missing when the email examples were shared. Most donors received email 1-3. As many of you know, we test different messages so we did send email 4 to a small audience in place of another email.
We’ve worked closely with folks in India to localize the messages sent and welcome any ideas for future message testing in India. SPuri-WMF (talk) 14:47, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SPuri-WMF Thank you. Now, are you still using email 4 anywhere else? And any chance of losing the reference to a "critical stage" in email 3? Andreas JN466 00:17, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Testing update from community suggestions[edit]

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to follow up here with some interesting test results! Thanks to @Ganesha811, @Folly Mox, @Bilorv, @Nosebagbear and others for inspiring and workshopping these. We’ve already made some changes from your ideas to the “control” banners (the template from which all tests are derived), which I’ve indicated below. And we have an opportunity to adopt 2 different treatments, could interested people please choose a direction?

- SPatton (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Removed humbly

Ganesha811 made this suggestion early on this page, and I pointed to that particular word as a known ‘power-up;’ adding it back to one of our banners in December was an 11% increase in donations.

We tested removing humbly a couple of times in the last weeks and didn’t see a significant difference in donation rates or amount raised. We have made the change to remove the word humbly from the next banners. So, what changed to reduce the impact of that concept? When I look back at the control copy in that December test, I see it happened early in the campaign. There have been several other changes and powerful wording added to the message since the December test, which likely make up for the impact that humbly had in the initial test.

In my opinion (as the guy who wrote it!), the power of humble is that it makes you think about the real people behind the message. Our current control achieves that by having a cohesive, personal tone in a message attributed to an actual human. So the little power-up is rendered less impactful.

Removed $3 is all I ask from the end of Paragraph 1

This suggestion came earlier on the page and we ran a test to confirm that we could remove the last one without seeing a significant impact. For this test, we were keeping a close eye on both donation rate as well as average gift, both of which often move if an anchor test produces a significant result. Overall there was not a significant difference in either donation rate or average gift. We’re happy to make this change and want to do more testing of the other anchor messages in that paragraph.

Promising results from suggested tests

We tested Banner 1 and Banner 2 above, incorporating some of the edits; thanks much for that engagement. And it is neat to see them both perform competitively with control. That’s really not something to take for granted.

Each of those tests changed the middle paragraph of our control banner. I’ll include that section of control, banner 1 and banner 2 here for easy reference:

Control
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and 12 other free knowledge projects, it meant that we could preserve our core values: neutral, high quality information, not outrage and clickbait. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

Banner 1
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a non-profit organization, there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

Banner 2
I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites because at its heart, Wikipedia belongs to you. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia, turn it into their personal playground, and cut you out. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.

And finally, here’s an idea for a new “hybrid” banner from the two messages above that I plan to test.

It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.

Let us know: which one would you prefer to see as the new control message that we’ll carry forward? And if you have other versions you'd want to try, please post them right here.

Second test update[edit]

Hi all, new testing update and a batch of messages!

I really appreciate everyone who has put their time into working on messaging together.

As we talked about in our first update, the Fundraising team has heard several new ideas on banner messaging from community members and has been using these to improve test messages ahead of the English banner campaign. We've got a neat test highlight to share, and we've worked on some new messaging priorities you'll see in the 'Up next' section of this post.

This page has been open since July and has led to really productive discussions, interesting tests, and new messages in the banners. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.

We started off in July with technical systems tests before testing messaging from volunteers on this page. We are getting closer to the main campaign period in Q2 (Oct-Dec 2023) and will dedicate the upcoming testing spots in the next month to prepare messaging together. This is the best window we have for methodical workshopping of banner language before we get into high volume campaign management. Time is moving quickly. We encourage you to speak up and participate now if you have ideas on these topics, or want to explore other angles. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Testing highlight

Banner 1, Banner 4 and Hybrid: The banners shared in the previous updates were all revised based on the discussion and copyediting on this page. These banners were tested and performed about the same. We moved forward with @Ganesha811's draft and iterated based on other suggestions on this page. Thank you for launching this round of improvements!

Current full banner message

Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Thursday, September 21, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours.

It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please give back. There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts. Thank you.

Up next

We're preparing a new batch of copy variants for testing, including messages based on the discussion on this page about Wikipedia's role in AI and the “Wikipedia is not for sale” headline that Jimmy wrote for last year's campaign. These were also ideas that Wikimania attendees shared with Julia and Sheetal a few weeks back when they held a banner messaging workshop at the conference.

Take a look at this next batch and please share your input or new versions to try.

AI and Wikipedia

When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned a source of neutral, quality information for all. In the age of AI, this vision matters more than ever. Wikipedia's verifiable, contextualized information is a valuable knowledge resource for these groundbreaking technologies. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how these systems will utilize it tomorrow.

New headlines

More lines to test incorporating into the full banner message example above, by theme:

Theme: Personal value and use

Theme: Non-profit & donations

Theme: Time-framing and traffic-framing in pre-tests

Theme: No ads

Please post your message ideas right here.

These proposed texts contain regressions. Please sort out the use of hyphens where dashes should be used, the use of curly quotes where straight quotes should be used, the continued unpleasant use of "1-minute", and the jargony use of "quality" as an adjective. My suggested copy edits are in a section above. You requested them. I volunteered my time to work on them. They were mostly ignored. That makes me feel a way that I prefer not to feel. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This sentence is odd: Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how these systems will utilize it tomorrow.
Just from a plain English point of view, the words support how don't really fit together. You could say Your contributions determine how ... but what exactly are we talking about here? My impression was that LLMs simply ingest Wikipedia, without the WMF having to do anything in particular to enable them to do so.
This request is time sensitive This reintroduces the sort of urgency that was criticised in last year's RfC.
Time will soon run out to help us in today’s short fundraiser. It seems we are pivoting from calling the "tests" short fundraisers. This is probably more accurate, but speaking of time running out again makes it sound a bit too urgent for my liking: the whole point is that the Thomases should not feel they have to donate to keep Wikipedia alive. Regards, Andreas JN466 16:08, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone for your feedback on our language suggestions and style choices. Our mistake on the copyedits. We pulled this list of ideas from a variety of sources and should have caught the mix of apostrophes. We’ve fixed them. I can also confirm we used the suggested copy edits in the banner from the August test update but the changes did not get copied in this most recent update.

We’ll make the changes based on your feedback here and the Wikipedia MoS on grammatical questions like apostrophes and em dashes. Given that the message is an appeal from Jimmy and not a Wikipedia article, the wording and tone in banners is more conversational and personal than the guidance from the MoS. Additionally, numbers have a prominent role in the messaging, referencing specific donation amounts or facts and figures. Thanks for the input on the readability of a few sentences. We’ll review and smooth out the wording for these longer sentences.

With regards to the 5% seeing this message line, a little context is needed here. We used this line on a low level pre-test where we made banners visible to only 5% of Wikipedia readers. I hope that clarifies this a bit.

The time sensitivity in messaging was discussed on the 2022 collaboration page, where we collaborated on messaging that highlights the importance around the moment of giving – not urgency about the state of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages are aimed at letting people know the timeliness of the appeals that appear at limited times of the year. Referencing time sensitivity is a common fundraising practice for many nonprofits. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Frequency of fundraising banners appearing

Is a schedule published somewhere, where each of the days on which 5% of readers have been shown banners can be reviewed? Judging both from my partner's comments when seeking miscellaneous info from Wikipedia lookups and from comments I see elsewhere, it seems frequent. AllyD (talk) 13:13, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Same. I see the banner every time I open the site. Professor Penguino (talk) 04:56, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your questions and feedback. We have been running pre-tests since the start of the new fiscal year in July in preparation for the main campaign. We started the collaboration process early this year to build in message creation with volunteers from the start of our typical pre-campaign testing period.

We typically run 1-2 brief high level tests each week. In the last two years, we have also started testing running banners showing to 5% of readers for a few days. These tests allow us to test ideas from this page, run systems and technical tests with new payment options, improve the experience of readers and donors, and offer more readers an opportunity to donate.

Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 13:21, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thought for a future fundraising banner campaign[edit]

This comes too late to really be incorporated in this year's banners, but the suggestion was given to me by a reader who was surprised that we aren't leveraging the value of our content, and I think it is worthwhile.

The reader suggests incorporating images hosted on Commons of physical features, monuments, buildings, etc that no longer exist; the reason for their absence could be war, natural disaster, or human activities. Examples could be some monuments/buildings in Ukraine that are now destroyed, images from Turkey and other Asian countries that have recently experienced earthquakes, areas destroyed by forest fires, etc. The banner line would be "Your donation supports the longterm hosting of images of and articles about things before they were damaged or destroyed. It also supports the volunteers who take these images and write these articles. " (or words to this effect).

I think this has the potential to be effective; the reader is a longtime donor to Wikipedia, but did mention that he just clicks the donate flag when he sees it, but doesn't find any of the messages particularly compelling. He felt that something highlighting something that readers actually can and do use might be more likely to bring in new donors. Risker (talk) 02:57, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a cool idea! WP:TIAD has lots of potential examples. Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Risker, thank you very much for this interesting feedback and my apologies for the slow response! It’s helpful to hear feedback like this. We always want to strike a balance between ‘topical’ fundraising content that speaks to the real world impact of knowledge and history, both its preservation and loss. We have to contextualize that against the thousands of reasons a universe of readers will have for arriving at Wikipedia in any given moment where they may see one of our time-limited fundraising campaigns.

Which is to say: our fundraising banner messaging will usually need to appeal to a broad base of readers around a common theme of utility, but once we have identified potential donors, it is very likely we can go further with storytelling around our work and movement in other channels such as email, mail or social media.

Additionally, there are other avenues of involvement in the movement that might be more directly applicable for readers who want to do more: e.g. participating in an editing event or one of the banner-supported campaigns like Wiki Loves Monuments.

We’re talking actively with internal stakeholders around ways we can do more to support these themes and goals, so this reader’s suggestions are well met. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When do they end?[edit]

We have complaints at WP:VPWMF and at the Teahouse about these. When do the banners come down? Edward-Woodrow (talk) 23:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We are currently doing pre-test to test our technical infrastructure and messaging. During this time readers will see banners. The banner campaign will start on the 28th of November. JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
JBrungs (WMF), if you could answer the question, that would be helpful. When does the banner campaign end? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:55, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is but the prelude? Edward-Woodrow (talk) 20:53, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They run until the end of the calendar year. JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 07:09, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Update on inviting donors to edit & WikiConference North America discussions[edit]

Hi everyone, I wanted to send a brief note following some really rich conversations at WikiConference North America last weekend. While looking over the new fundraising report and brainstorming ideas for the campaign, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the invitation to edit on the thank you page that readers reach after they make a donation. There has also been a lot of interest on this collaboration page to spread the word with readers to try out editing. The team has experimented with this invitation to edit in other fundraising campaigns over the year and is excited to try it out in the English campaign coming up. We’ll plan a few brief tests in the next week and welcome any input or advice as we try to increase awareness and people getting started editing. Sheetal and I also gathered a lot of great messaging ideas and themes at the conference and shared them with the team once we got home. The team is workshopping those ideas to prepare some new messages to share back here. Thanks a lot to everyone who brought creative ideas, in person and on this page, for how we can make the fundraising campaign more impactful this year! MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Campaign Launch Update[edit]

Hi all, it is officially Campaign Launch Eve. I'm just coming back from celebrating the U.S. Thanksgiving with my family, so I will lead by expressing deep gratitude for everyone who took the time to prepare the campaign together. There has been a lot of creativity and attention to detail on this page as well as good discussions in person at Wikimania, WikiCon NA, and elsewhere. Thank you for all the engagement and constructive input.

This is a big update so I'll dive right in. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fundraising Report published

The Foundation is pleased to have published our latest fundraising report, covering the financial year 2022/23. We produce this fundraising report every year to share what we learn from engaging with millions of donors around the world. As far as we know, the Wikimedia Foundation is the only major charity to share this type of fundraising information transparently with the public. The report highlights advancements to the fundraising program in the last year, learnings from the new community collaboration process, updates on the Endowment, and information on how the Foundation continues to diversify streams of revenue to ensure our strategy remains resilient, particularly as we adapt to changing trends in the world around us and take a longer view toward the future.

Highlights from 'pre-tests' and campaign prep

In the last couple of months, The fundraising team has been working on banner improvements to prepare for the start of the campaign this week. As discussed above, we call these 'pre-tests' because they run for just a short span of hours, and/or at a low % of available traffic.

We've used this pre-test window to add more support for editor account creation for donors, improve the user experience of our banners, and try a range of content. Here are some key outcomes:

Tie-ins to editing

Improved user experience

Messaging

The campaign pre-testing period has been important to find convenient and effective ways to ask readers to give that connects with readers and volunteers. We'll continue testing once the campaign starts to find improvements to streamline the giving process, limit disruption, and encourage more people to donate.  

Current message + new ideas for discussion

Wikipedia is still not on the market.
November 27: An important update from Jimmy Wales

Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Monday, November 27, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year and whether you're able to give $3 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours.

It is hard to know what to trust online these days. Wikipedia is different: not perfect, but also not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It is written by everyone, together, because they want to help create a free repository of high-quality information.

If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please give back. There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts.

Wikimedia Foundation | Proud host of Wikipedia and its sister sites

And here's a new batch of  message ideas, many based on discussions here and offline. We look forward to input on these messages and new ideas you may have below!  

New messaging ideas

Time-framing

Headlines

Please share your ideas here! These can be iterations on the message above, new sentences, inspiring words, themes, or new concepts to try. Thank you, everyone.

Feedback on the above messages

The only good "time frame" message is the first one. The other two are terribly awkward. The last "headline" message should say "Wikipedia is the world's encyclopedia". We are most definitely not a library in any sense. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is a "library" in Wikimedia's weird romanticization of knowledge which creates the often obnoxious floaty diction that somehow, at the same time, says little about the nature of knowledge. I suppose it can be considered a library as a place of learning. But, still, I consider it a step back from previous banners which merely compared Wikipedia to a library. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 05:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Jonesey95 and Mebigrouxboy,
Thank you for the discussion.  “Wikipedia is the world's library” is a new idea we were considering but have never used before. Your feedback on this idea makes sense and we will stick with the general comparison to libraries. Thanks also for the input on the time framing ideas. We'll share some more new messages in the coming days. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. If you need a more eloquent reasoning besides "definitely not a library", let me know. For starters, Wikipedia does not lend books of any kind (the book-creation feature was even decommissioned, I believe), lend or provide access to other kinds of full-length media, provide access to detailed reference materials, host story reading time for children, provide unhoused people a place to get warm, host in-person meetings, or sell used books, among other things. In fact, at WP:NOT, you find a long list of things that Wikipedia is not, but that libraries often provide access to. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:13, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Campaign update[edit]

Hi everyone, the campaign started last week and it’s been a busy few days of testing. We have some early news to share on the invitation to edit that donors see once they complete their donation. In the first week of the campaign, we had more than 1,400 accounts created with 11% of the new accounts making an un-reverted edit within 24 hours of creating an account. We’re still early in the campaign and will continue monitoring and reporting back, but we wanted to share some early news with you all. Thank you for all the enthusiasm and interest in making the call to edit part of the fundraiser this year!

There have been some interesting banner messaging learnings in the last week, for example framing the campaign as our “end-of-year fundraiser” seems to be resonating with readers. Interestingly talking about Giving Tuesday, a popular day to give to charities in several countries does not seem to resonate.

We tested this new idea inspired from Folly Mox's suggestion to talk about the role of Wikipedia in training AI.

"In the age of AI, Wikipedia matters more than ever. Verifiable, contextualized information is a vital resource for emerging technologies. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how revolutionary new systems will utilize it tomorrow."

We also tested some ideas around the line from Jonesey95 "Wikipedia is the world's encyclopedia". We continue to work with these ideas this week.

New messaging ideas

Here are a few new banner message ideas for input and discussion:

“There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts.”
“People ask: Why not run ads to make revenue? Or make everyone pay to read? The truth is that while these things might be the norm online, Wikipedia is different. We refuse to compromise its neutrality or your access to information. We’re proud to have left that money on the table. Instead, we ask for voluntary support once in a while.”
“For the first time recently.” (Included in the first banner only)
“We’ve asked you a few times recently.” (Included in subsequent banners)
"We all benefit from Wikipedia. Please, help uphold free, people-powered knowledge by supporting us today. Hundreds of millions of people rely on Wikipedia each day, but maintaining it and expanding access to free information has a cost. Your donations make a real difference."
"It's a little awkward to ask, but this Friday we need your help."

New headline ideas

Thank you for following along with the campaign. If you have any other ideas you would like to share, please use this space here to do that!

Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the update, and for all of the team's hard work! I'm glad to hear (in the prior update) that my suggestion appears to be useful. Good luck with the fundraiser - I hope we can hit the target quickly and end it asap! In that way it's a lot like a radio pledge drive. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Thank you for your support Ganesha811!

The team has been busy this week testing some of the ideas I shared above. “Wikipedia can’t be sold” emerged this past week as a really strong headline, as has the addition of “We’ve asked you a few times recently” in the content.

We are also looking for ways to increase the number of folks signing up for recurring donations and tested some new content around this.

Language around AI and misinformation

The paragraph below is currently live in our banners and helps to explain Wikipedia’s unique role in the age of AI. We were happy to see this content working well as we know AI is top of mind for many readers and editors (the article on Chat GPT was the most read this year on English Wikipedia).

In the age of AI, access to impartial, verifiable facts is crucial. Wikipedia matters more than ever as a reliable source for emerging technologies – and you. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how revolutionary new systems will utilize it tomorrow.

We would love to test some other ideas on the theme of AI. If you have any suggestions for this paragraph, or are feeling creative and want to write a new edit to this paragraph, feel free to share here.

End-of-year messaging

In our last days of the year, we’ll try some of the end of year / end of campaign messaging that often performs well:

Thank you campaign

We will run a short thank you banner campaign in January to thank readers and to increase transparency as to how their gifts are used and the work of the Foundation. We hope to use this space to share some of this content, as well as test some actions someone can take to continue supporting Wikipedia, for example signing up to make an edit.

We are almost at the end of our campaign and are feeling so grateful for all the collaboration so far in this space and beyond. We look forward to wrapping up the campaign and sharing results and learnings in the new year.

Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Thank you campaign might be an excellent opportunity, in select subnational geographies, to experiment with inviting donors to local w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day events (for example in Toronto and NYC). Pharos (talk) 21:36, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You should tell us donors your goal amount ...[edit]

at the kick off of your donation run. Then when you re-send your requests there should be updates to the amount attained in regards to that goal: this year we need to raise $100,000.00. If everyone donated ... etc.

Heck, maybe even a little unobtrusive banner indicating hitting a milestone would be cool to keep us in the know.

But definitely later when you are sending out the requests again, remind and update us: We are reaching out again asking you to consider donating once more or for the first time. Our current donations total $25,000.00 of a $ 100,000 goal. If everyone could donate ... etc

I have donated several times this year, but I can't find your goal amount anywhere nor how much has been received. I would like to know so I can gage my next donation on that information. Especially at the end of the year ... It should be given to us, so we don't have to research for it. Research takes time which takes away from the research I do for my work.

Just a request to consider. Thanks.

A long time user who is grateful for your work 75.181.249.137 (talk) 12:02, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thank you so much for your support and for your suggestion to improve the campaign, which ended on December 31. We tried some messages using a goal thermometer throughout the campaign, but it is a great idea to try again near the end of year, as many donors decide to give in the last few days of the year. We’ll note this idea to try next December.

And as far as an “unobtrusive banner” indicating our overall progress towards the goal: we are right there with you! We’ll be working on some small “Thank You” banners this month to make sure our valuable readers, contributors and donors see their incredible impact.

Thank you again for your gift and collaboration as we work to continually improve the fundraising campaign. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia ended yesterday[edit]

Dear all,

The WMF annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US ended yesterday.

We would like to thank all of you whether you collaborated with us on the community collaboration page, or answered questions from readers on the Helpdesk, the Teahouse, or the VRT. Thank you all for your engagement during the Foundation’s biggest banner fundraising campaign of the year and for all your contributions to the projects. Thank you to all the donors who made the campaign a success and support free knowledge.

You can find the fundraising team across on meta if you have any questions or comments.

Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 10:38, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much JBrungs for coordinating this year. – SJ + 20:01, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrapping up fundraising banners 2023[edit]

Hi everyone, I want to give you an update on how the English banner campaign throughout the last quarter went, give you an overview of what we all achieved together, and what we are planning next.

First of all, thank you to all of you who engaged, helped form messaging, made new suggestions, let us know your thoughts on concepts, and generally were there to create this campaign together. From the start of the fiscal year and leading up to the campaign, there was a shared effort to prepare the fundraiser together through collaboration which helped to shape this important moment to ask readers for their support.

Throughout the campaign, we kept the conversation going with several updates which summarized our work together (First round of new banners incorporating copy suggestions, Testing update from community suggestions, Second test update, Campaign Launch Update, and Campaign update). Here are a few brief campaign highlights:

We will, as always, provide the fundraising report after we end the fiscal year. Today we’d like to share that the English banner campaign reached the revenue target and our progress towards the annual goal is looking good. Right now the team is wrapping up the campaign by thanking readers and donors for their support, and sharing more information about Wikimedia to deepen understanding and relationships. We are currently at around 75% to our annual goal and still have campaigns in both Q3 and Q4 coming up that will help us reach the goal by the end of the financial year.

We’ll carry learnings from the English campaign forward as we collaborate with local communities on the upcoming campaigns.

In order to create a strong experience for readers and donors, we focus on providing a convenient and secure experience that’s localized for donors around the world. We are exploring ways to do that even more efficiently through machine learning tools to provide a more personalized experience, minimize reader disruption, improve analytics, and develop long term relationships with our donors.

And finally, we would love to hear from you what worked well in this year’s community collaboration process and what we can do better next year. Please leave your thoughts and suggestions below so we can improve our collaboration together.

Thank you again to everyone who collaborated with us this year.

Best, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update, Sheetal! Glad to hear the highlights. ((u|Sdkb)) talk 21:35, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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