Fundraising/2024-25 Report
Introduction
At the Wikimedia Foundation, our approach to fundraising aims to reflect the spirit of collaboration, openness, and participation at the heart of Wikipedia. Every year, we occasionally ask readers to give back to support the free encyclopedia they trust and cherish. Most contributions are small, but together they add up to millions of dollars worldwide.
This grassroots support is key to maintaining the independence of Wikipedia and our other free knowledge projects. These contributions enable us to host the site, support a global community of editors, and maintain the legal and technical infrastructure that keeps Wikipedia secure and reliable. Wikipedia remains an independent space that people trust and value—an online oasis where knowledge is freely shared.
As this report shows, our Fiscal Year 2024-2025 fundraising program had many strengths and successes. At the same time, we began to see the effects of declining human traffic on Wikipedia due to changing online behaviour. The number of donors decreased during this period, but our overall results remained steady. That is because those who did donate gave more on average, reflecting their incredible loyalty and support for our work.
Collaboration with volunteers has guided our fundraising efforts for many years. This has been essential in shaping our reader-based fundraising model, and it will continue to be so in the future. We welcome conversations with our volunteers, on Wikipedia and at community events, especially as our world continues to change. Together, we are invested in making sure Wikipedia remains a thriving, multigenerational project. Securing long-term grassroots funding is key to making that vision a reality.
Key Statistics
Summary: FY24-25 fundraising revenue totaled US$184.5M* from over 18M donations, representing an 8% increase in revenue over the prior year, and a 7% increase in donation volume.
Donors: The overall number of donors to the Foundation decreased 2.4% in FY24-25, falling from 7.9 million in FY23-24 to 7.7 million.
Within that decrease, the number of new donors giving to the Foundation fell 10.2% in FY24-25, from 2.6 million in FY23-24 to 2.3 million.
Average Donation: The average donation across all donations and funding sources was US$10.15, reflecting a US$0.10 or 1% increase over the prior year.
Channel Summary: The sources of donations came from a variety of channels, including newly launched methods like direct mail and SMS. Traditional sources like Banners and Email accounted for the bulk of revenue (34% and 17%, respectively), and Recurring (monthly and annual gifts) continued to see a notable increase year over year , accounting for 23% of all revenue (and representing a 19% growth in revenue from FY23-24).
*Financial figures shared in this presentation are non-GAAP and may differ slightly from our audited financials.
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Community Collaboration
At the Wikimedia Foundation, collaboration with our global communities is core to what we do. In FY24-25, we collaborated with Wikimedia volunteers around the world to continuously improve our fundraising efforts in support of our mission.
The team worked with volunteers on local language wiki collaboration spaces, virtual calls, in-person volunteer events (such as Wikimania and WikiConNA), and in other forums. Here are a few campaign highlights from collaboration with volunteers:
- In response to a request from volunteers to use more multimedia content in banners, we tested including a Wikiminute video (some versions of which were dubbed and subtitled for non-English audiences) in our end-of-year banners.
- We continued to use banner content created with the help of volunteers to better educate readers about how Wikipedia works.
- We performed a number of tests encouraging donors to try editing, with calls-to-action on both Wikipedia.org and the post-donation Thank You page. This year there were around 3,700 completed registrations to edit.
- We featured Affiliates and their websites on our donor Thank You page.
We are grateful to all our fundraising communities for engaging with and supporting our fundraising efforts in FY2425.
Localizing our content
To provide a quality experience to our global readers, it is important to develop appeals that take linguistic and cultural nuances into consideration. We translate our best performing messages from English into 25 languages and modify the messages we use for different cultural contexts. Affiliates, the Movement Communications’ community translator group, professional native translators, and translation agencies work together with our multilingual global fundraising staff to provide localization expertise. We actively monitor and balance donor, reader, and volunteer feedback to develop and adapt our messaging.
In FY24-25, volunteers from around the world gave their time to discuss their own unique contexts, providing valuable insight on topics ranging from how to provide a strong local payment experience to the best ways to translate our messages for a local audience.
The fundraising team is grateful to everyone who worked together with them on these campaigns, and we look forward to strengthening collaboration in the year to come. If you would like to help translate fundraising messages or participate in localizing the donor experience, please email fr-localization@wikimedia.org to get involved.
Recurring donations
Recurring donations make up an increasingly significant portion of our total fundraising revenue. These vital monthly and yearly donations help ensure the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
In FY24-25, we reached a major milestone of 1 million monthly donors and saw an increase of 19% in revenue from our recurring program YoY. Our yearly recurring option has also shown healthy levels of adoption since it launched in December 2024. Our curated journey for active recurring donors has significantly improved overall retention rates, and recurring donors consistently give additional gifts on top of their monthly or annual commitment.
Banners
The fundraising appeals we serve to Wikipedia website readers are called “banners,” and they remain our biggest channel for donor conversion. Over the years, we’ve optimized our web banners through extensive testing to identify key messages that resonate with this engaged audience, as well as through design and UX improvements to facilitate the donor experience and reach our fundraising goals.
Beyond our fundraising objectives, banners also provide a unique opportunity to speak to a high volume of readers, so we regularly seek ways to use this platform to educate readers on how Wikipedia works, the role of the Wikimedia Foundation, and our vision for the future of free knowledge.
In FY24-25, we implemented various fundraising banner initiatives which not only secured the necessary revenue in the short term, but also served as driving forces for our long term objectives.
Recurring gift enablement
In FY24-25, we continued to explore ways to make our recurring giving options more compelling and available. Most notably, our engineers enabled us to offer donors the choice to give their recurring gifts either annually or monthly:
We also continued to optimize the messaging around our recurring options through multiple improvements to the "nudge" copy we include with the button (e.g. "Support Wikipedia year-round").
Donor banner
In December 2024, we achieved a major campaign milestone: the launch of a special, non-appeal Wikipedia.org banner element which acknowledges and thanks recent donors.
With this new design, we sought to show donors a small token of appreciation, and encourage them to visit our wikimediafoundation.org website to deepen their understanding of the nonprofit behind Wikipedia.
Diversifying donor options
In our end-of-year campaign, we began to experiment with sharing alternative ways for donors to contribute beyond typical small, individual online gifts. For our U.S. readers, we added a banner module detailing three other ways to give. We plan to expand this idea further in upcoming campaigns, and to localize the content for readers around the world.
Wikipedia Portal
At certain times throughout the year, visitors to the Wikipedia portal may see our portal banner fundraising appeals. In FY24-25, we revised the design and position of the portal banners, which was successful on mobile devices in previous years. We also added a "minimize" function, so that readers can easily move the banner to a smaller, less obtrusive version across the bottom of their screen.
Donate Links
Recently, we have sought small ways to boost revenue from readers visiting the site throughout the year, not just during fundraising campaigns. For example, we added a donate link to the desktop header menu.
We also added a slightly more prominent donation element to the mobile navigation. It is initially hidden inside the "hamburger" menu.
Year over year, donations from these persistent menu elements increased more than 98%.
Email is our critical "off-Wikipedia" fundraising channel—it accounts for 18.5% of our total fundraising revenue. Our emails raise millions of dollars each year through personalized interactions with readers who have either made a gift before or expressed an interest in donating. Building relationships with past donors and re-engaging them to continue their support has been a key part of the strategy to diversify revenue streams beyond Wikipedia banners and strengthen the long-term sustainability of the fundraising program.
In our email program, we focus on testing different approaches with different audiences.
For example, in FY24-25, we developed an engagement email series designed to build brand recognition and strengthen donor loyalty. We aimed to help donors and readers answer the question: “What is the Wikimedia Foundation?” and to help them better understand our mission and work.
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As part of our commitment to transparency, the team shares banners and emails on Meta and on local language Wikipedias prior to each campaign.
As a result of our thorough optimization strategy, the Wikimedia Foundation’s emails consistently perform above industry benchmarks.
Industry benchmarks* vs. The Wikimedia Foundation Benchmarks
*sourced from 2025 M+R nonprofit benchmarks
| Industry* | The Wikimedia Foundation |
|---|---|
| Email revenue declined by 11% on average, while the share of all online revenue directly sourced to email was 11% | The Wikimedia Foundation email revenue declined by 2% |
| For every 1,000 fundraising messages sent, nonprofits raised $58 | For every 1,000 fundraising messages sent, the Wikimedia Foundation raised $770 |
| The average click-through rate for fundraising messages was 0.48% | The average click-through rate for the Wikimedia Foundation messages was 5.76% |
Direct Mail
In FY24-25, we piloted a Direct Mail (postal mail) program within the U.S. market. With this expansion, we aim to diversify our fundraising streams and give donors more ways to support our mission.
Mailings included a combination of stewardship content and appeal content, both to help deepen our donors' connection with Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, and to ask directly for their support. The learnings in this initial year have helped inform the growth trajectory for the Direct Mail program in the FY25-26 year.
SMS
In FY24-25, we launched our SMS texting program in the U.S. This initiative aims to diversify the Foundation’s outreach channels and revenue streams. It also complements our email and web banner efforts to engage and retain supporters.
We started this pilot program by letting users opt in to receive SMS through the “Remind me later” option in banners. This feature previously supported email signups only. Now, Wikipedia readers can choose their preferred way to connect with the Foundation.
The SMS channel is tailor-made for an increasingly mobile world. It offers personal, engaging calls to action for readers, volunteers, and donors wherever they are.
Major Gifts, the Wikimedia Endowment, and Legacy Giving
Major Gifts
Staff working in support of the Major Gifts (gifts of over US$1,000) and the Wikimedia Endowment programs build long-term personal relationships with donors, securing support for the Wikimedia Foundation’s immediate and long-term needs. Through customized cultivation strategies, impact reports, newsletters, and in-person and virtual meetings and events, we help bring the Foundation and the Endowment’s work alive for donors.
In FY24-25, major donors contributed US$21.3 million to the Foundation. This includes more than 2,300 people who gave gifts of over US$1,000, while the remainder was made up of contributions from donor-advised funds, payroll deductions, and other donation methods that fall under major gifts. Many donors choose to be recognized on our Benefactors page, which is a public expression of gratitude for those donors who have supported the Wikimedia Foundation.
Gifts from major donors are a key part of the Wikimedia Foundation’s revenue strategy, and we expect our major giving targets to increase in the coming years. The vast majority of major gifts are unrestricted donations to the Foundation’s general operating fund. A small number of purpose-restricted donations were made this year. Restricted donations help donors make a specific impact on our mission and give an opportunity for donors to feel a meaningful and transformative connection to our work. An example of a restricted donation this year was the Rockefeller Foundation's continued support for the development of Abstract Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Endowment
The Wikimedia Endowment is our long-term commitment to ensuring everyone has free access to knowledge that is accurate, relevant, and useful. Launched in 2016, the Wikimedia Endowment's purpose is to provide lasting financial support to Wikimedia projects. As of June 30, 2025, the Wikimedia Endowment was valued at US$169 million.
The Wikimedia Endowment is an investment fund, which means that the Endowment’s monies are invested in financial markets. A portion of the gains from the Wikimedia Endowment's investments is reinvested to grow the Endowment over time, and a portion of the fund is used to cover the Endowment's operational costs and provide funding for Wikimedia projects, in accordance with the spending policy.
In FY2425, the Wikimedia Endowment approved its third round of grants to support technical innovation on the Wikimedia projects. The Endowment’s grantmaking is focused on technical innovation and funds projects that will help Wikipedia stay relevant and thrive in a rapidly changing technology landscape.
More than 250,000 donors gave a total of US$12 million to the Wikimedia Endowment this year, via a variety of methods—including direct donations, realized bequests from individuals who left gifts to Wikimedia in their wills, and through other planned giving methods. Throughout the year, about 460 people and institutions made gifts of US$1,000 or more to the Wikimedia Endowment.
Legacy Giving
Legacy Giving (or "Planned Giving") is a key part of the Endowment’s current campaign and our long-term strategy, as it allows us to collect pledges for future donations, most commonly through gifts in wills and beneficiary designations. The Wikimedia Endowment has partnered with FreeWill, a free online tool to create a legal will in the United States, and also provides donors with informational resources to make it easy for those who wish to make a legacy gift to the Endowment. This year, 426 people made planned gift commitments.
Many of our Endowment donors choose to be recognized on the Endowment website’s Benefactors page or as members of the Wikipedia Legacy Society.
Fundraising Technology & Payments
Our donation systems and infrastructure enable supporters to make millions of small gifts from around the world, powering our movement.
We are constantly working to make giving more seamless for readers who wish to donate, while also maintaining our industry-leading standards for protecting the privacy of our supporters, in alignment with the Foundation’s Guiding Principles. This includes limiting the data collected to process donations. The data we do collect is stored in our self-hosted donor database. For our technical stack, we favor free and open-source software that we can self-host on our own hardware.
Notable work in FY24-25 includes building out a modern, self-hosted analytics platform. This platform powers our long-term fundraising forecasting, which enables us to plan for the Foundation's future while ensuring every donor dollar is used wisely and sustainably.
Another key improvement in FY24-25 has been the adoption of a new payment orchestration system. This system was designed to make it easier to add new payment options and to optimize them over time, all while remaining legally compliant and technically efficient. Virtually all of our online payment processing (including credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and GPay) has been migrated to the new orchestrator, streamlining our internal systems and facilitating the rapid adoption of new payment methods.
These examples are only highlights from all of the technical updates we have made this year to make donating to the Wikimedia Foundation as simple and straightforward as possible for donors around the world.
Donor Relations
Wikipedia is built by people for people, so listening to our wide and varied audience is central to fulfilling our mission. In FY24-25, the Donor Relations team responded to 188,700 donor and supporter inquiries from 110 countries in 38 languages. A portion of these supporters reached out to us to express their gratitude for Wikipedia, tell us more about why they decided to support our mission, and suggest ways we could improve in the future. We are glad to share some of these comments from readers around the world below:
Donor from the US:
"I believe that Wikipedia is the most valuable thing that has been created since the advent of the internet. ‘By the people, for the people.’ Its value grows exponentially year by year in the face of the deformation of information as we once knew it."
Donor from Brazil:
"As a journalist, I deeply recognize the importance of Wikipedia as an accessible and collaborative source of information. I know how much this collective work positively impacts access to knowledge on a global scale—and it is an honor to be able to contribute, even in a modest way, to ensuring that this mission continues."
Donor from Romania:
"It is reassuring to see that the initial foundation of the internet—to connect people and share knowledge without commercialisation—is still alive. I am confident that you are an inspiration for many young people that will continue in this spirit in ways that we can not imagine now."
Donor from France:
"Wikipedia is a magnificent example of what is made possible when millions of people work, despite their differences (with their differences!), towards a common goal."
Donor from Ireland:
"Without platforms like yours we are doomed to lose knowledge and repeat mistakes of the past. Your endeavour to spread information and to keep knowledge available to the masses is inspirational and desperately needed in a time where division online and in the real world is rife. Your fight for freedom and sharing of information is one I strongly identify with and I am happy that I can help in any way."
Donor from Italy:
"My small gesture is nothing compared to your great value, to the mission that you have been carrying out for so long. In my own small way, I feel honored and proud to support you! In this time of global chaos, information and truth are indispensable. Thank you for what you do."
Donor from Canada:
"I am deeply grateful to Wikipedia for continuing to preserve fact-based content. I appreciate that you need donors to enable you to stay independent. These days it feels like your work is a cornerstone of democracy."
Donor from Mexico:
"Your collective work has not only been responsible for compiling information accessible to all, but has also improved the lives of many people (including mine). Thank you for making this possible, for having supported me for more than a decade in my training as a student and as a person. In a world where misinformation reigns, Wikipedia has become a bastion of truth, and as Sir Francis Bacon said: 'Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority'."
Donor from Japan:
"I see Wikipedia as my online library, and most certainly a first reference when I'm diving deep into a subject or finding the proper reference for new subjects. You guys are nailing it in a way that many other sites miss. Thank you very, very much!"
Donor from Australia:
"Wikipedia is an unbelievable online library of information, for anyone worldwide to find answers to just about anything imaginable, at our fingertips. What an amazing benefit and privilege to the world!"
Report Talk Page
Thank you for reading our annual fundraising report. Please visit the talk page for any questions or to leave comments about the report. We are happy to share information about fundraising at the Wikimedia Foundation and look forward to your feedback. We will respond to comments and questions to the best of our ability.