Talk:Fundraising/2014-15 Report

Thank you for reading the 2014-2015 Fundraising Report. Please share feedback or questions on this page.

Header image scale

Hey - nice report! However, the header image's scale is incorrect (the "$45M" and the "$50K" should be swapped). JSutherland (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

My fault! Sorry, heather walls (talk) 05:54, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Q&C from Pine

1. Nice visual design. Who did that?

   Thank you! The report was a collaborative effort across the fundraising team with input from other departments as well. The visuals in the report were created by User:Spatton_(WMF) from Fundraising with some edits to the cover image from User:Heatheawalls from the Communications Department. MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

2. The report says, "Nearly 50,000 online donors indicated that they would like to receive information about how to edit Wikipedia, and will be recontacted in the 2015–2016 fiscal year." This is good to hear. How will these possible editors be introduced to editing? Will Wikimedia affiliates be involved? Also, this IEG proposal may be of interest.

   We are really excited about this project. These donors (who also completed an optional survey and submitted an email address) could be a really promising group of potential new editors. We have the email contact info for these donors and are planning to send them a message with info on how to edit. We don’t know exactly what this will look like yet, but we have started brainstorming ideas with the Communications, Editing, and Research teams. Thank you for sending the link to the grant. It seems like this may overlap with a project we’re talking about with Victor. We’ll follow up to see how we can best use these video materials in future communications with donors who want to become new editors.MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

3. I would appreciate it if Fundraising would replace messages that imply that WMF is operating on a shoestring budget and that Wikipedia is in danger of either shutting down or becoming an ad-sponsored site in the next year, with messaging that is honest and talks about how the funds are actually used. Many good things are done with the funds, and I have ethical and legal concerns with continuing to use language like "If everyone gave $3, we could keep it online & ad-free for another year."

   Thanks for the feedback. We are queuing up a lot of new messages to try this year, particularly around updates to Wikimedia new work and strategy. WMF is very fortunate to have supportive readers. It really is reader donations that keep us online and ad-free. Long ago, WMF decided to ask for donations, instead of running ads. It is a reason why people need to donate to Wikipedia. There are plenty of free sites on the Internet but they are supported by ads. Reader donations do more than just keep us online and ad-free. In the past year, we have added lines to the message to talk about more parts of the project and summarize our main costs (staff, programs, servers and supporting the community volunteers who make it all happen.) We aim to find more ways to educate our readers about more parts of the project, in a way that’s also powerful for raising the budget. We have a meta page to submit new banner ideas. It would be great if you could add some ideas you’d like to see in the banner. Just one clarification note, we are not saying “If everyone gave $3, we could keep it online & ad-free for another year." The sentence we frequently use is “If everyone reading this gave $3, the fundraiser would be done within an hour”, which highlights our wide reader base and how quickly the fundraiser could end if everyone pitched in a small amount.MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

   One of the example banners given in the report displays the exact sentence "If everyone reading this gave $3, we could keep it online & ad-free another year." Some people may infer from this that this message is being used, or considered for use, in fundraising banners. --71.119.131.184 23:01, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

   Ah, thanks for clarifying. Some of our tests run for a small percentage of users for less than an hour, which is the case for that particular banner. The sentence (“If everyone reading this gave $3, we could keep it online and ad-free for another year”) is not in our usual fundraising message and was not in the main message that ran during the entire past campaign. We did not end up using that sentence and we commit to not using it in the future. MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

4. Has the research into the decline in total Wikipedia viewership yet determined what may be causing the downward trend? I've heard some speculation but not firm conclusions.

   Right now, the only thing we know is that mobile traffic is not growing as fast as desktop is declining. We are putting measures in place, such as an inline survey tool, to better understand our readers and their needs. However, without the ability to measure users or sessions (due to traditional privacy concerns), it is hard to know whether we are seeing fewer users, fewer sessions or shallower sessions. We do have some theories as to why it might be happening, but so far have been unable to verify them--this is something we are taking very seriously and trying to understand better. Jkatz (WMF) (talk)

5. How is the WMF fundraising campaign deconflicted with the affiliate fundraising campaigns, including email and on-wiki?

   We coordinate with chapters about the timing of our campaigns and we try to contain them to only three weeks (four weeks at the longest) each year. WMF has also recognized that need for improved coordination around Central Notice and we will soon be hiring a coordinator to serve as “air traffic control” for this purpose.MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, --Pine^✉ 02:31, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Per country

Hi,

The statistics by continent are very prominent, but I couldn't find statistics by country. Am I not looking well enough or is it just not there? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:22, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Amir, the fundraising team does not have public data for donations from each country. There are a few different reasons why the team may not be able to publish data from a country, including privacy and security and other legal reasons. Thanks, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

it is just "number of persons giving, and total amount". if you could elaborate your statement so i would be able to understand it as well? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 02:24, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Latin America Question

Excellent report!

I'm really impressed with the low level of donations from Latina America.

We need to do something to stimulate people to contribute a little bit more to our mission.

During the first two weeks of the campaign in Brasil, I received a lot of messages from friends requesting information about the Wikipedia banners asking for donations, a lot of people thought that it was spam, spyware or something fake. So, I guess the low level of donations from Brasil (specially) can be linked with that issue.

In August I started a local effort talking to some journalists regarding the importance of the donations to our movement.

I contacted some of our contacts to spread it, and many posts was published here regarding the fund-raising campaign, with a really good impact.

http://bit.blog.br/wikipedia-pede-doacoes-para-ajudar-a-manter-site-no-ar/ ( interview replicated on twitter and facebook of http://diariodepernambuco.com.br/ to more than 800.000 followers)

http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/vida-e-cidadania/wikipedia-comeca-nova-campanha-de-doacoes-para-manter-site-funcionando-cdlzioae60haolfoz3l6ohm1c

http://www.tecmundo.com.br/wikipedia/84931-wikipedia-volta-pedir-doacoes-leitores-manter-ar.htm

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/2015/08/1670681-wikipedia-comeca-nova-campanha-de-doacoes-para-manter-site-funcionando.shtml

http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/08/wikipedia-pede-doacoes-para-se-manter-independente.html

What we can do to help to improve the local level of donations? I'm really interested to help with that problem here and our user group can spend some time on it, for sure it is something that need some attention.

How can I get more information about the donations from Brasil, mainly to identify if after the news published by the local media it improved(or not) the level of donations?

There are any way to track it?

Best regards

Rodrigo Padula Project Manager / User Group Coordinator Wikimedia Brazilian Community User Group of Education and Research http://www.wikimedia.org.br

Thank you for your help spreading the word about the campaign in Brazil! We can’t directly track donations directly to those specific media mentions, but it would be great to do a de-brief with you in a few weeks to connect on lessons learned and ideas for next steps for how the local user group can help improve fundraising. Thank you for staying connected to the fundraising team throughout the campaign, the local feedback and updates were really helpful.

The donation totals by region do not necessarily reflect the potential of each region. The Brazil campaign actually started in the 2015-16 fiscal year (so the total amount raised is not reflected in this report). In the 2014-15 fiscal year, we integrated with a new payment processor to be able to process donations in Brazil in local currency and local payment methods. In the next year, we are planning to expand this integration to other countries in Latin America. We will see the increase in the amount raised in these countries in the 2015-16 fiscal year. We continually research ways we can expand and improve fundraising around the world. MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Andreas

As pointed out previously,[1] the Wikipedia Reader Survey mentioned in the Fundraising Report didn't ask respondents to assess the urgency of the fundraising message against the Foundation's actual financial situation (or if they were asked, those results weren't reported). Several members of this list had suggested this be done. It is disappointing that it wasn't.

One example banner shown in the report for example says:

"Wikipedia readers. We survive on donations. If everyone reading this gave $3, we could keep it online and ad-free for another year."

As a number of people have told you, this type of banner message is widely understood to signify that the Wikimedia Foundation lacks funds to keep Wikipedia online without ad revenue for another year. But in fact, you took enough money this year alone to keep Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects online and ad-free until the year 2040, if you allocated the funds received to that purpose.

On the suggestions page in Meta,[2] I proposed on September 1, 2015 that you test a wording which, instead of telling people you need money to keep Wikipedia online without ads, just told them "to take one minute to keep our work going for another year".

That would be an honest message: you are doing a lot of work. Most of this has nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free, but much of it is valuable. Moreover, I and many others would like the Foundation to do more in certain areas. I understand that doing stuff costs money. But donors need to understand what their money is used for.

It took you four weeks to reply to my suggestion, only to tell me that the version you tested still asked people for money "to keep it online and growing". And you say that you don't have time to test anything else now.

So I am fully expecting that we will see messages of the "Wikipedia readers. We survive on donations. If everyone reading this gave $3, we could keep it online and ad-free for another year." type in two months' time.

This is a shame. It is quite possible that readers would donate amply out of generosity and gratitude, without having to be frightened with the spectre of Wikipedia blinking out of existence.

If you told readers specifics about the Foundation's work, instead of the platitudes contained in an out-of-date FAQ,[3] people might even be inspired and enthused into donating.

To me, all of this reflects very, very poorly on the Foundation. There are many different kinds of wealth. Money is a kind of wealth, integrity is another. Long-term, the latter brings better rewards.

Andreas

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-03-18/Op-ed [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2015-16_Fundraising_ideas#Banner_test_ideas

[3] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en

Thank you for reviewing the survey from last fiscal year and sending your thoughts, it’s good feedback to receive. We are working on future surveys and will be revising the questions to get more feedback on a variety of fundraising topics. We are definitely taking this feedback into consideration for upcoming surveys and will ask more questions related to the message. Thanks for your help as we make improvements to surveys.

The particular sentence (“If everyone reading this gave $3, we could keep it online and ad-free for another year”) is not in our usual fundraising message and was not in the main message that ran during the entire past campaign. In the report, we posted examples of a wide variety of variables tested. Some of our tests run for a small percentage of users for less than an hour, which is the case for that particular banner. We did not end up using that sentence and we commit to not using it in the future. The sentence we frequently use is “If everyone reading this gave $3, the fundraiser would be done within an hour”, which highlights our wide reader base and how quickly the fundraiser could end if everyone pitched in a small amount.

There’s a similar question above about messaging for next year. I’m copying the reply here as well, and directing the conversation to the 2015-16 test ideas page to keep detailed comments about future banners in one place. We are queuing up a lot of new messages to try this year, particularly around updates to Wikimedia new work and strategy. WMF is very fortunate to have supportive readers. It really is reader donations that keep us online and ad-free. Long ago, WMF decided to ask for donations, instead of running ads. It is a reason why people need to donate to Wikipedia. There are plenty of free sites on the Internet but they are supported by ads. Reader donations do more than just keep us online and ad-free. In the past year, we have added lines to the message to talk about more parts of the project and summarize our main costs (staff, programs, servers and supporting the community volunteers who make it all happen.) We aim to find more ways to educate our readers about more parts of the project, in a way that’s also powerful for raising the budget. We have a meta page to submit new banner ideas. It would be great to use that page to track new banner ideas. Thank you for reading the report and sending feedback! MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Totals by country

Is it possible to get fundraising numbers broken by country (I'm mainly interested the countries where we ran concerted campaigns)? As far as I can tell, they're not public yet. I'm mainly asking out of curiosity, but I may think of interesting ways to mash it up with editing data in the future. Thanks!—Neil P. Quinn-WMF (talk) 00:03, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for reading the report! We are posting the totals by region this year. There is an explanation from Stephen LaPorte (WMF) on this question above. Thanks! MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 09:49, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

rhe comment you refer isnt an explanation of why, at the very least you should be able to give numbers of donations and total value amount. Gnangarra (talk) 02:43, 4 November 2015 (UTC)