The majority of funding for the Wikimedia Foundation comes from individual donors all around the world. These donations allow the Foundation to provide the world-class technology infrastructure that supports 15 billion monthly views to Wikipedia and its sister projects, protect free knowledge globally through legal and advocacy efforts, and support the incredible volunteer editors who have built 63 million articles across more than 300 languages. In the past year, the Foundation has been focusing heavily on improvements to our products and technology, particularly the needs of experienced editors, as was outlined in the FY 2023-2024 annual plan. Going forward into the FY 2024-2025 annual plan, the Foundation will continue this course by prioritizing maintenance and upgrades for technical infrastructure, such as MediaWiki core, data center operations, and site reliability engineering services. There are also key results around a number of issues discussed here over the past year, such as ways to help volunteers connect to others who share their interests, building newcomer edit workflows that reduce the burden on experienced editors, building a new community wishlist that better connects movement ideas to Foundation activities, and improving tools for editors with extended rights.
To fund these efforts, the Foundation’s fundraising team will run its annual 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, rolling into the usual end of year high-traffic banner campaign.
Collaborating on messaging with volunteer stakeholders is key to the fundraising team. We will start with a message directly adapted from the co-created banner message that ran in December 2023 to kick off the pre-tests and work together with volunteers on new ideas for this year's campaign.
Many ideas shared by volunteers on the English campaign co-creation page last year were incorporated into our fundraising. Such as:
Language around the role of Wikipedia in relation to AI was introduced to the banners
The concept of time sensitivity, to encourage readers to donate now rather than later, was further explained
Clarity that the messages come from the Wikimedia Foundation by adding the organizational logo to all banners was introduced
It was made easier for readers to stop seeing banners for example increasing the duration for which a reader could dismiss banners for
Improvements were made to the payment methods and options, including tests to simplify the Venmo checkout flow, and a major milestone of releasing in-app Apple Pay transactions with the Wikipedia Apps team.
Donors also saw an invitation to start editing on the Thank You page, after they donated. This led to 4,398 new account creations, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours (a constructive edit means the edit wasn’t subsequently reverted within 48 hours). For more detail on the results, have a look at the Growth Team’s page.
Based on collaboration on wiki and in person last year, the fundraising team wants to continue co-creating banner messaging and ideas with you. You can participate:
On wiki: Right here on this en.wiki collaboration page, or the fundraising Meta page. The team will share campaign insights, plans, and updates on this collaboration page. Updates will include message ideas for input, summaries on banner testing, changes to messaging over time, and space for new ideas and questions from volunteers. While we won't be able to test every single message idea shared here, we will build from the process in previous years to continue to try ideas shared in this collaboration space as well as other new spaces we're setting up this year.
In person: Members of the fundraising team will attend Wikimania, WikiConference North America, and other movement events for in-person conversations and collaboration.
Live conversations: Virtual conversation spaces for fundraising staff and volunteers to collaborate on fundraising. Is there an existing meeting you'd like us to attend? Please let us know!
Direct individual engagement: If you're interested in connecting directly, please email Julia Brungs at jbrungs at wikimedia dot org.
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, last December's control messaging will be used. And to kick off new messaging, the team welcomes your ideas!
‘Current best’ banner from the last December campaign
June 17th: An important update for readers in the United States.
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. We're sorry to interrupt, but it's Monday, June 17th, and it will soon be too late to help us in our fundraiser.[under discussion] We ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year and if you're able to give $2.75 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If everyone reading this gave just $2.75, we'd hit our goal in a few hours.
In the age of AI, access to verifiable facts is crucial. Wikipedia is at the heart of online information, powering everything from your personal searches to emerging AI technologies. Your gift strengthens the knowledge of today and tomorrow.
If Wikipedia is one of the websites you use most and if the knowledge you gain here is valuable, please give $2.75. Every contribution helps: every edit, every gift counts.
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!
Thanks for opening up this space again! Quick question - what messages were notably unsuccessful last year? Were there any other themes (besides the example given above) that stood out? —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:07, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that messages like that come across as deeply manipulative and that's not the image we want to portray. I also think the banners have been getting more and more intrusive in recent years, especially on mobile when they can take up the entire screen. How about something simple and retro like this chestnut from 2009?
WIKIPEDIAFOREVER
Otherwise, there are great simple and positive slogans that aren't obnoxiously long here. I'm partial to Written by volunteers, supported by readers like you. Donate today Of course, Give us the money or your homework gets it has a certain je ne sais quoi. The WordsmithTalk to me00:53, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this proposal is good and straightforward. We have had complaints about the obtrusiveness of the current ad campaign, so I think something smaller this year would really set the right tone from the WMF. I would show that they've listened to our concerns and readers' concerns, and acted instead of doubling down. Cremastra (talk) 05:21, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The WIKIPEDIA FOREVER style banners were widely panned at the time, but nowadays we can look back fondly because we didn't realize how good we actually had it. The WMF fundraisers, like the state of web advertising in general, have just gotten so much worse. I think keeping it small, simple and with a positive message (instead of manipulation and guilt tripping) would be a breath of fresh air to readers who are constantly bombarded by ads that demand more and more of their attention. The WordsmithTalk to me05:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A quick reminder that in in a 2022 RfC the community resoundingly agreed that "banners that state or imply any of the following are not considered appropriate on the English Wikipedia":
Wikipedia's existence or independence is under threat or dependent on donations
Donated funds are used primarily to support Wikipedia and/or its volunteer editors
Readers should feel obliged to donate regardless of their means ("guilt tripping")
As the person who closed that discussion, I'd also add that the clear wish of the majority of participants was that the fundraising team endeavour to reflect the spirit of these limits in their messaging, by prioritising honesty, accuracy, and respect for readers over maximising donation revenue. – Joe (talk) 08:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And therefore this banner is definitely not appropriate here. I hope the WMF is watching this page, and considering some of the alternatives provided. Cremastra (talk) 08:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Joe Roe, I wonder how accurate you feel the "Wikipedia's existence or independence is under threat or dependent on donations" line is these days. Wikipedia's existence depends upon money; that money currently comes from smaller donations. If donations stopped, how do we imagine getting money without giving up independence (e.g., by running advertisements or having to please a major donor)?
I saw someone posting that the entire movement – WMF, WMDE, and all the other affiliates around the world, combined – spend less than Google paid their CEO. I have been wondering whether we could come up with comparisons that would be fun and a little less personal than pointing at an individual. Maybe something like "We need just five hours' of Google's annual revenue to run for the whole year"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that our existence is under threat. w:en:Internet censorship exists, and Wikipedia, especially the English Wikipedia, is not beloved by every politician in the world. However, these more immediate threats aren't primarily financial in nature.
There are long-term financial threats. For example, how do you get donors, if everyone gets Wiktionary definitions and Wikipedia information from their smart speakers, without ever visiting a WMF-hosted website?
Right now, though, I think the financial need is to get ahead of some of these problems (e.g., hiring more lawyers), and the financial threat is internal, primarily in the form of people who don't know what really needs to be done, and how much that really costs. I've asked people for years what they think should be cut from the WMF's budget, and the responses I've gotten tend to fall into three categories:
Ideas that don't hold up under any scrutiny: This tends to come in the form of saying that the WMF shouldn't give Google a voluntary choice between ordinary download rates and paying for high-speed connection and guaranteed tech support, because everyone knows that high-speed connections and tech support are basically free anyway, but it can also take other forms, e.g., saying that the software changes benefiting Group A should be canceled because I'm not in Group A, or saying self-contradictory things, like the WMF needs fewer employees, and also why aren't they doing more, like building tools to counter all that AI garbage?
Canceling programs that aren't run by the WMF: If I had a dollar for every time someone thought that the Wiki Education Foundation was part of the WMF...
Bad ideas: For example, hiring less competent staff or hiring only people from developing countries, because that would be cheaper ...but not necessarily less expensive in the long-run.
What I haven't ever heard is something like "Yeah, I actually know what the Legal team does, I can tell you the names of the multiple countries threatening legislation targeting Wikipedia specifically, and I think that they've hired too many lawyers" or "Yeah, I run a similarly high-volume website in my day job, and I totally think that 200 engineers is enough." Reddit has less traffic, lower technical needs (e.g., less video support), and three times as many employees. OpenAI (home of ChatGPT) has more than twice as many employees. At some point, you have to ask yourself whether all of these other organizations are run by stupid CEOs with pointlessly bloated payrolls, or if maybe the WMF actually needs the number of people it's employing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To connect that back more clearly: How does this show up? In the form of editors, most of whom have no relevant business experience (some of whom are just teenagers), claiming, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that there's no threat to Wikipedia's existence, that Wikipedia could remain independent without small donors, and that if the WMF can't raise enough money while telling people that their donations aren't actually needed, then they should just cut the budget.
Expect those people to be the first people to complain about "mismanagement" if the site goes down due to staffing cutbacks. The fact that the English Wikipedia didn't crash when Queen Elizabeth died is because the WMF spent many millions of dollars solving very boring technical problems and literally having engineers working round the clock. If they stop that kind of work, then the next big event will take the site down. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I recall Jimmy and others made a similar argument during and after the 2022 RfC. The points of contention are basically the size of the WMF budget and the size of its reserves. I forget the exact figures (and probably they've changed in the last two years), but the point was made that if, hypothetically, all donation income ceased tomorrow, Wikipedia could still use its reserves to continue under its current budget for years to come. Or, if it scaled back to just essential maintenance, potentially indefinitely. Of course nobody seriously expects or wants something like that to happen, but it's why a lot of people were unhappy with language that strongly implied the project was under immediate threat or experiencing financial difficulties. – Joe (talk) 09:54, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Concerns about suggestions of urgency and subtle threat in emails
For reference, there is similar language in the current English fundraising emails (Email 1, Email 2, Email 3, Email 4) as well. For example:
"I’m sorry to interrupt, but it's Friday, June 14, 2024, and time will soon run out to help us because the clock is ticking on this fundraiser." (Email 2)
"But time will soon run out for you to help us in this fundraiser, so if you've been holding off until “later”, this is your moment. We need you. Please, remain one of Wikipedia's rare supporters." (Email 3)
"I know I said I was done in my last email, but it's Friday, June 14, 2024, and we haven't reached our goal. There are only a few days left in this fundraiser to make a difference. You have shown with your last donation how committed you are to helping us sustain Wikipedia. Please, remain one of the 2% of supporters who propel this important mission forward. It matters. We need you. Please remain an active Wikipedia supporter." (Email 4)
What do people think about these wordings? Also, the font size in the sample emails linked on Meta and above is tiny. (I was only able to read the text after copying it out.) Julia, could this be fixed? In the past the sample emails were always legible right away. And note that the Jimbo pictures are gone, replaced by pictures of Lisa, the WMF fundraising chief and deputy CEO. That's a departure! Regards, --AndreasJN46617:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Those seem like standard marketing tactics of guilt tripping and creating a false sense of urgency. Most of the message is fine, but I don't like the deceptive language that's being pushed with those lines. It also looks like the images of Lisa Seitz-Gruwell actually violate the terms of CC-BY, which is incredibly embarrassing for the WMF. Email 3 and 4 seem to use c:File:Lisa Seitz-Gruwell 008 - Wikimedia Foundation Oct11.jpg, and Email 1 uses a cropped version of this. CC-BY 3.0 Unported requires attribution in the form of the creator's name, title of the work and a hyperlink. All of this appears to be missing, and the hyperlink for "found on Wikimedia Commons" just goes to the Main Page. The image for Email 2 also claims to be from Commons, but I can't actually find it there. A reverse image search only turns up the profile picture on Lisa Seitz-Gruwell's Medium account (which also has no attribution). The WordsmithTalk to me17:44, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is possible, but in that case the attribution probably wouldn't say CC-BY 3.0, found on Wikimedia Commons. It seems to clearly indicate that it's being used under the terms of CC-BY 3.0 Unported license which the image is licensed under on Commons. If the author signed some sort of release or license, then that licensing text wouldn't be necessary. The WordsmithTalk to me18:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @The Wordsmith, thanks for the reminder to always provide accurate attribution. This image was created by a staff member and we’ll make sure any images we use under the terms of a CC license have accurate attribution before the campaign goes out. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here are a few more quotes from the sample emails worth pondering:
"We don’t charge a subscription fee or run ads because we don’t want to put barriers between you and the knowledge you seek. In return, can we count on your support today?" (Email 1)
"Major websites have come and gone; new generations are growing up with no memory of a world without the connectivity and instant gratification of the internet. We owe it to them, in a world that is always changing, to keep Wikipedia free for everyone. Like it always was and always should be." (Email 2)
"This might be my last chance to request, so I want to make sure this third email reaches everyone who might donate. Right now, we're at a critical stage of our fundraiser." (Email 3)
"You have shown with your last donation how committed you are to helping us sustain Wikipedia. Please, remain one of the 2% of supporters who propel this important mission forward. It matters. [...] But I hope you'll agree that in a world where disinformation is everywhere, it is crucial that everyone has access to trustworthy information. We need our community of donors to help us reach our goal, and time will soon run out in this fundraiser." (Email 4)
We apparently need to establish a Fundraising Ethics Advisory Panel with community volunteers on it, cos we don't want this rubbish coming back every year. It's hard enough, convincing newcomers that they have to be honest and truthful and neutral, even when we're NOT sending them branded communication that pretends there's a deadline to donate money.—S MarshallT/C22:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your input and active conversation.
Cremastra, we are indeed actively reviewing feedback coming through this page. The sample banner shared was from the December campaign, which aimed to create a sense of urgency for the end of the year (December 31st). We appreciate your feedback that this urgency may not be appropriate at other times of the year. As we plan our testing priorities, we will take this sentiment into account and work on alternative messages. I’ll post back here with some suggestions and results from upcoming tests.
Joe, we appreciate your input regarding the 2022 RfC .The general use of urgency in messaging is an important and appropriate persuasion tool in nonprofit fundraising. It helps potential donors understand that their donation is necessary to advance a cause they care about. The 2022 RfC, as you pointed out, identifies specific messaging themes where urgency is inappropriate, and we intentionally avoid these in our banner appeals, though interpretation can vary and we are here for those discussions.
Andreas, I’ll look into the font size issue and ensure we post clearer samples. Thank you for pointing this out.
Next week we will run a brief benchmark test and then proceed with limited content and feature testing. Will share learnings from that in this space soon. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would contest the view that it's appropriate and ethical to use urgency and deadlines in messaging at any time when the WMF is in absolutely no danger at all of running out of money.
We as a community insist on absolute truthfulness and utmost good faith in messaging. Everything that appears with Wikipedia or Wikipedia-adjacent branding must comply with every single one of Wikipedia's standards of accuracy, objectivity and neutrality.
If this impacts your ability to raise money, and I appreciate that it likely will, then we need to be speaking to the people who set the fundraising targets -- not the poor people who're trying to meet them.—S MarshallT/C07:26, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's no reason to be threatening the WMF with that. We're not at Defcon 2 here. They're engaging in perfectly reasonable discussion and are usually, if not always, compliant with sufficiently-clear guidance from the community on fundraising ethics.—S MarshallT/C07:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know that. I'm certainly not proposing such an extreme step at this stage. (Sorry if that wasn't clear from my comment). Cremastra (talk) 08:01, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"There is no subscription fee on Wikipedia, and the articles you read are free. We don’t profit from the knowledge you seek. In fact, we firmly believe that knowledge should exist outside of the realm of supply and demand. But that doesn’t mean we don't need support from our readers. We respectfully ask for just one donation this year so that Wikipedia may continue to expand to new corners of the world."
The proposed India email 1, scheduled for use from 22 July to 15 August, reads:
"We don’t charge a subscription fee or run ads because we don’t want to put barriers between you and the knowledge you seek. In return, can we count on your support today? No gift is too big or too small."
I find the South Africa wording okay, while the India wording is subtly threatening. Can you see the difference? What do other editors feel? --AndreasJN46612:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I largely agree. The specific problem with the India wording is "we don't want to" combined with "In return" which makes it seem too much like quid pro quo. Though I'm not an expert on Indian English, so it could just be an WP:ENGVAR issue on my end. I do think the South Africa messaging sounds good, focuses on our core goal and asks for help to achieve it. That's exactly the message I think Wikipedians should be sending to readers. The WordsmithTalk to me17:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it is an ENGVAR issue, because I do not read it as quid pro quo (I'm an Indian). It feels like a fairly reasonable phrasing on this, equivalent to "We don't charge a fee. So can you support us?" Soni (talk) 18:34, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I was interpreting it more like "We don't want to charge a subscription fee, but we will if we don't get enough money". If it reads differently to people in India, then I withdraw my concern about it. The WordsmithTalk to me18:42, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In past years, English wordings for India were much the same as what was sent out to the rest of the English-speaking world a few months later. I would be very surprised if Indian email recipients were singled out for more urgent-sounding appeals. That is not the case, User:SPuri-WMF, is it?
At any rate, The Wordsmith, you put your finger on exactly the same points in the wording that struck me. The South Africa wording in the old Jimbo emails is excellent, and far more in line with what was agreed in 2022. AndreasJN46607:27, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another question, SPuri-WMF. The samples provided on Meta-Wiki are just that – samples, provided with the understanding that you will try a number of variants in the course of a campaign. Can you give us an assurance that whatever agreements are made here concerning banner and email messages will also be observed in alternate email texts not provided on Meta-Wiki? --AndreasJN46612:32, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello all from a constant user of Wiki. I just thought I'd throw out my thoughts to youall. AS a note, I've contributed in the past.
It seems this years banners asking for contributions ran waaaaaay to long! So long I got vexed and sent a trite msg back about the campaign being so long. Isn't it enough for just 1 month long campaign. If I access Wiki just once a day, that's 30 times a month it's in my face. Multiple that by 3 months and.....I got a nice reply but still saw the banners.
Now I'm getting an email from the Fund Raising Officer Lisa Seitz Gruwell. I just had to look it up.
The Financials says it all. Wiki is not floundering financially!
Thanks Ganesha811, for the question about last year’s themes. The team worked closely with volunteers last year and found for example that messaging around AI worked really well.
Some messages and themes stood out as unsuccessful last year. Headlines are particularly challenging to replace. We tested over 18 headlines on themes from AI (e.g., “Wikipedia is still human”), to free knowledge ( “Wikipedia is still free”) to the importance and usefulness of Wikipedia (e.g., “If Wikipedia is useful for you, read on”). However, these did not seem to resonate as well as our main headline, “Wikipedia is not for sale”.
We also tried to refresh the opening line of our banners, “Please don’t skip this one-minute read” with a variety of phrases that are close in context (“don’t skip today”, “don’t dismiss today”, “don’t jump past”) and completely refreshing with a new theme (“You’re here looking for information so we’ll keep it quick”, “Thank you for stopping”), and removal of the line altogether. “Please don’t skip this one-minute read” continues to be the opening line.
We also saw success by adding more educational value to our banners, explaining that Wikipedia is written by volunteers and hosted by a non-profit. We start some light pre-tests next week. Here are some ideas of themes we are thinking about trying.
Wikipedia as a place where people can get information they trust
Wikipedia as a place where the knowledge is trustworthy because humans create it
The work of the Wikimedia Foundation to maintain Wikipedia’s technology and protect people’s right to free knowledge around the world.
Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to reader privacy and never tracking or selling their information. To quote this new Wikiminute video, “in a world where personal data has become currency, privacy is worth every penny.”
Thanks for the details. I'll see (bearing in mind the discussion above) if there are some phrases or themes it might be interesting to try out. —Ganesha811 (talk) 22:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, that's helpful. While I'm not sure asking readers to "trust" Wikipedia is a winning strategy, I do appreciate the positive messaging and it seems like a step in the right direction. One thing that still seems unclear to several of us, though: what metrics are you using to define "success"? Is it purely click-through rate and donations, or are people giving qualitative feedback on the messages? If your test results are available on Wikipedia or Meta I'd be interested in taking a look. The WordsmithTalk to me22:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These look like better options. Have you considered testing something quote short; like one sentence and a button? People might be steered away by walls of text, because they're annoying, but more willing to donate if they perceive the requests as more gentle. Cremastra (talk) 22:28, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder how many donations we would get from something like this:
If you have found Wikipedia useful recently, please donate. [button]
FOREVER
