Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2025-2026/Goals/Effectiveness
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The Effectiveness Goal focuses on continuously strengthening and improving the Foundation’s financial, risk management, organizational, and operational capabilities to deliver on these goals and on our mission.
Financial sustainability and donor experiments
[edit]We will maintain a strong financial base by raising funds effectively and managing them responsibly to support our mission and maximize impact. We are increasing our annual revenue goal to $207.5M, continuing to invest in long-term revenue strategies, and running year-long experiments in donor experience. Simultaneously, we are improving financial management and maintaining a responsible, sustainable budget.
Specific goals include:
- Raise $207.5M for the annual fund and invest in longer-term revenue strategies. Implement year-long donor experience experiments and metrics.
- Manage our budgetary and financial health in line with industry best practices to support our impact and sustainability in the long term.
- Invest in longer-term and diversified revenue strategies, including learnings from additional donor experience experiments;
Over the years, we have been working towards diversifying our revenue sources, such as growing Wikimedia Enterprise, increasing the share of revenue coming from recurring donors, and growing the Endowment. To ensure a sustainable future for the Wikimedia projects, we must continue to evolve our revenue model while continuing to invest in the channels that make up the majority of our revenue today.
In the coming year, we plan to raise $167M through online fundraising and $19M from major donors, making up the majority of the Wikimedia Foundation’s revenue. Our key fundraising channels – banners and email – will remain central, but we will also explore new opportunities, including growing recurring donations as well as new personalizations for interested donors on Wikipedia.org and in the Wikipedia app that enhance their reading experience.
To continue growing support for Wikipedia, we are focusing on building deeper relationships with donors. Instead of relying solely on one-time gifts from casual readers, we are expanding our efforts to engage donors over time, encouraging recurring giving, personalizing donor experiences, and helping people understand the impact of their support. This strategy is showing early signs of success, with the total amount raised per active donor increasing significantly in the past two years. Next year, we will more comprehensively evaluate this strategy by conducting a longitudinal research study on the long-term giving behaviour of donors.
Finally, we will continue to strengthen our brand and storytelling efforts and help donors better understand and advocate for Wikipedia's important role in the world. One example will be leveraging Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary celebrations as a key storytelling moment.
By expanding revenue sources while maintaining our commitment to grassroots fundraising, we aim to create greater sustainability in our revenue model in the years ahead.
Enterprise risk management
[edit]We will further deepen risk management protocols, processes, and systems embedded within teams across the Foundation. Our goals include:
- Use an internal risk management framework to guide risk identification, assessment, response, and monitoring—enabling the organization to address issues that could affect our mission, performance, and resilience.
- Maintain staff working groups who coordinate activity related to key risk areas to help rapidly respond to external trends and growing threats.
- Enhance the data, systems, financial, and risk management practices that power our operations.
Improve our ways of working
[edit]We are also putting greater emphasis on how we work and collaborate, refining systems, streamlining financial operations, and improving tools and processes within Product and Technology and throughout the organization. Our goals include:
- Reduce friction, obstacles, and errors in processes, systems, and structures.
- Improve effectiveness of Product & Engineering teams through improved processes, including learning ways of work that can be adopted across the department and organization, less friction and obstacles (inefficiencies and errors), and achieving impact quicker, fostering a positive shift in culture.
Staff performance
[edit]This year, we are placing a deeper focus on enabling staff performance, including strengthening people management, clarifying roles, and cultivating more effective collaboration. This will enable us to cultivate a workplace culture that empowers us to do great work, individually and together. Our goals include:
- Increase clarity and understanding of the processes, policies and resources to support staff.
- Improve collaboration and effectiveness by increasing intentionally designed staff touchpoints, repairing harm when it emerges and strengthening performance management.
- Strengthen manager effectiveness through training and development and fostering a community for managers to learn, grow and support one another.
- Enhance staff gatherings – virtual, hybrid and in-person – to promote learning, connection, and growth to boost staff engagement, and cross-organizational collaboration.