Fundraising
Who are we?
The Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising team cultivates the resources that propel our movement. We engage millions of people from countries across the globe to support Wikipedia and its sister projects. The overwhelming majority of the Foundation's funding comes from individual readers from all over the world giving an average of $15.
Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation maintain server infrastructure, improve the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia and its sister projects accessible globally to millions of people. The fundraising team is responsible for raising the Wikimedia Foundation's budget through online campaigns.
These campaigns have the additional goal to educate all readers about Wikipedia and how our movement works. We are grateful for all the readers, contributors, and donors who make Wikipedia and our other projects a global home for knowledge and discovery.
To continue thriving we must constantly innovate, adapting to the changing needs of our readers and new advances in the technology that powers the Wikimedia universe. For additional information, please see the 2022–2023 Fundraising Report.
Our Goals
A Global Project
Readers around the world show their support for Wikimedia each year. The Wikimedia Foundation receives donations from nearly every country in the world in over 80 currencies, 20 payment methods, and 50 languages. We strive to provide readers worldwide with the best localized donation experience possible by offering preferred local payment methods and high quality messages in local languages.
Testing and Optimization
The online fundraiser is based on constant testing and optimization of different themes, messages, designs and user flows. We aim to educate all Wikipedia readers about our movement, provide a convenient donation process, and minimize the disruption of fundraiser banners on the reader experience. Only a tiny portion of readers donate -- therefore, we must always be improving our methods.
Educating Readers
Another goal of the fundraiser is to educate Wikipedia readers about the Wikimedia movement. We do this through the messages displayed in banners as well as through creative content featuring the Wikimedia community. Over the years, we've run personal appeal messages from community members, featured videos introducing Wikimedia volunteers, and invited readers to join in editing.
Current fundraising activities
Global[edit]
Operated by Wikimedia Foundation
For the Financial Year 23/24 Q1 and Q2 campaigns
- Fundraising banners in Italy – 3rd to 31st of October. Here are some example banners – please note that we constantly test banners and you might see different variations of these banners: Desktop large, Desktop small, Mobile large, Mobile small
- English campaign emails (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, the US) – 7th of August to 1st of December. Here are some example emails, we test email messaging and you might see different variations of these emails: Email 1 Email 2, Email 3
- English campaign banners (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, the US) – 28th of November to 31st of December. Pre-tests will start in mid July and you can find more information, background, test messaging and add your own ideas, on the community collaboration page. Here are some examples of English banners: Desktop large, Desktop small, Mobile large, Mobile small. During the campaign we also run French banners in Canada and Spanish banners in the US. Here are some examples of those: French Desktop large, French Desktop small, French Mobile large, French Mobile small, Spanish Desktop large, Spanish Desktop small, Spanish Mobile large, Spanish Mobile small
- Japan fundraising campaign (Email 8th of January to the 2nd of February, Banners 6th of February to the 5th of March)
- Latin America fundraising campaigns (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay) (Email 12th - 16th of February. Banners: 5th of March - 30th of April (please note that banners are running at a 75% impression rate. This means that 75% of readers will be seeing a banner for 10x)
- Belgium fundraising campaign (Email 4th - 22nd of March, Banners 2nd of March to 28th of May (please note that banners are running at a 75% impression rate. This means that 75% of readers will be seeing a banner for 10x)
- Austria (Banners 2nd of March to 28th of May (please note that banners are running at a 75% impression rate. This means that 75% of readers will be seeing a banner for 10x)
- Norway (Banners 2nd of March to 28th of May (please note that banners are running at a 75% impression rate. This means that 75% of readers will be seeing a banner for 10x)
- Luxembourg (Banners 2nd of March to 28th of May (please note that banners are running at a 75% impression rate. This means that 75% of readers will be seeing a banner for 10x)
- Denmark (Emails 3rd o 23rd of June, Banners 2nd of March to 28th of May (please note that banners are running at a 75% impression rate. This means that 75% of readers will be seeing a banner for 10x)
- Czech Republic (Emails 1st to 26th of April, Banners 28th of May to 25th of June)
- English email campaign 1st to the 26th of April
- Sweden (Emails 1st to 24th of May, Banners 28th of May to 25th of June)
- Portugal (Emails 13th to 31st of May, Banners 28th of May to 25th of June)
- Spain (Emails 13th to 31st of May, Banners 28th of May to 25th of June)
- Greece (Banners 28th of May to 25th of June)
- South Africa (Emails 1st to the 24th of May, Banners 28th of May to the 25th of June)
Community collaboration pages around WMF's fundraising campaigns 2022/23[edit]
Swedish fundraising campaign community engagement page
Czech fundraising campaign community engagement page
Mexico fundraising campaign community engagement page
Brazil fundraising campaign community engagement page
Community collaboration pages around WMF's fundraising campaigns 2023/24[edit]
French fundraising campaign community collaboration page
India fundraising campaign community engagement page
Dutch fundraising campaign community collaboration page
Italian fundraising campaign community collaboration page
English fundraising banner community collaboration page
Germany[edit]
Operated by Wikimedia Deutschland
- Fundraising testing:
- Fundraising Banners:
Switzerland[edit]
Operated by Wikimedia Switzerland
- Fundraising Banner Testing:
- Fundraising Banner Fundraising:
Contact Us
- We have an FAQ for donors and one for community members.
- Please stay in contact with us on the fundraising talk page.
- IRC channel: #wikimedia-fundraisingconnect (publicly logged)
- To report technical software bugs in Phabricator, follow mw:How to report a bug and use the #wikimedia-fundraising project tag.
- For a breakdown of how fundraising tech uses Phabricator, check out this wikitech page.
- For a calendar of all central-notice banners, including fundraising, see CentralNotice/Calendar.
Fundraising updates
See the full archive
Articles, videos etc. (here you find relevant articles about Wikimedia fundraising and finance)[edit]
Building a secure financial future for Wikipedia by Lisa Seitz Gruwell
Foundation 360 Building the relationships and resources we need to thrive Interview with Megan Hernandez, Advancement Department
The finances of free knowledge Lessons in transparency and impact by Jaime Villagomez
Annual Plan Conversations - Advancement and Finance and Administration Departments watch Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez take questions around the 2021/22 annual plan.
Five reasons Wikipedia needs your support (post supporting the 2021 English banner fundraising campaign) by Pats Pena
7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia by Lisa Seitz Gruwell
2023/24 Q1 Update[edit]
The last quarter was all about collaboration between the fundraising team and the English Wikipedia community! In mid-July we launched the English Wikipedia fundraising banner community collaboration page and have been working with interested volunteers there since then. Collaboration so far has been fruitful and we tested new themes suggested by volunteers (e.g. disinformation and AI), we harmonized our style, and improved on suggested messaging. Fundraising staff also attended Wikimania where they hosted a working session on banner messaging. The session was attended by ca. 15 people, who shared their ideas and opinions on the banners. We will continue to engage with volunteers until the end of December but really would like volunteers who are interested to come along now as now is the time that we can accommodate more discussion and experiments around messaging before the very busy campaign management phase starts.
Next to the English campaign, we run fundraising campaigns (both email and banner) in France, India, and the Netherlands. We engaged both communities through a collaboration page (France, Netherlands, and India) and offered community calls.
Going into Q2 we are looking forward to further engaging with our communities.
You can find updates from the Endowment on the Endowment meta page and in its latest Diff post The Next Chapter for the Wikimedia Endowment.
2022/23 Q4 Update[edit]
In Q4, the fundraising team ran campaigns in the Czech Republic, Mexico, and Brazil.
We continued to iterate on our new approaches by engaging communities in fundraising campaigns from early on in the process by creating community collaboration pages. For the first time, we ran a fundraising campaign in the Czech Republic. We made adjustments to the localisation of our messaging based on feedback from Mexico and the Czech Community reached out to the Czech Affiliate to learn more about the new fundraising campaign. This is a work in process and we are constantly iterating and adapting to community needs. You can find some examples of the community pages below:
The team also hosted open community calls, where community members can bring ideas, ask questions, and engage with the fundraising team to improve the campaigns. We hosted two community calls in Q4 with Brazil (25th of April), and Mexico (25th of April).
Here is what our donors have said:
Through this channel I will write a short testimonial. I've always been thirsty for culture and I've always tried to solve all doubts about any subject. In the past, I used encyclopedias and libraries, but I was never satisfied with my research. With the emergence of Wikipedia I have always been able to solve my doubts. I always look for this channel and through the links I spend hours researching. I can no longer record in my memory all the subjects I research but the satisfaction in solving curiosities, even momentarily, is very great. I am very grateful to you. (Donor from Brazil)
Major gifts and Endowment
We engage with major donors to both the Foundation and the Endowment throughout the year via one-on-one meetings (both in-person and virtually), email and postal mail.
The Endowment disbursed its first grants in April 2023. Regular updates are posted on the Endowment meta page.
See also
- Erik Moeller and Domas Mituzas on fundraising since 2010