Tag: wikipedia

Wikipedia has just ended their month and a half long fundraising efforts. The website now has a massive ‘Thank You‘ banner noting that this was “shortest fundraiser” the organization has ever had.

What’s more, 2011 is also the tenth year since Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia as a community project. The website is now the fifth most visited website on the internet and though its traffic rivals those from the likes of Google and Facebook, the not-for-profit group only has close to 50 people on its payroll.

Jimmy Wales has listed out some interesting statistics about the latest fundraiser

• Over 500,000 donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.
• Almost 130,000 donations to the local Wikimedia chapters world-wide.
• Two of the largest fundraising days in Wikipedia history.
• Average donation size: about $22.

Though Wikipedia may no longer be actively seeking donations from its website visitors, interested people may still make their donations by visiting this link.

As you know, Wikipedia has been asking its readers for donations to cover the operating costs of their not-for-profit Wikimedia foundation. From the looks of it, the fundraising program has been a success with close to $14.8 million raised as of date. The stated goal was to raise $16 million that could cover the organization’s costs for most of 2011.

Wikipedia has now posted a message on their website seeking for minimal donations from readers that could help the organization wind up their fundraiser. A new banner on the Wikipedia website reads,

The latest fundraising efforts are quite phenomenal considering that similar efforts last year had only helped the organization raise close to $10 million. Jimmy Wales had earlier noted that his organization would need at least $20 million to cover costs for 2011 and that close to $16 million of this would be raised from the visitors to the Wikimedia websites.

Unless you have completely shut yourself off the internet over the past couple of months, you are sure to have stumbled upon one of the donation banners that has been put up on Wikipedia. The not-for-profit group had stated back in November that they are expecting operating costs to hit close to $20.4 million in 2010-2011 and that they are hoping to make at least $16 million of this via donations.

While this appeal for donation still stays as a work-in-progress, the latest banner on Wikipedia tells us about the success that the foundation has had in requesting visitors for donation. The banner notes that the organization has already made $12.5 million through contributions which means they are still $3.5 million away from their stated goals. That is pretty impressive considering that the donations last year added up to only around $8 million.

You can still make your contribution by visiting the Wikipedia donation page here.

If you hit the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, one of these days, you will notice a prominent banner on the top fold of the page with a message – “Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales“. As you guessed it, the Wikimedia foundation is now in the process of getting its visitors to contribute towards the operating expenses of the website that has remained largely ad-free all through these years. The non-profit foundation has noted that the operating expenses for running a website as big as Wikipedia is expected to hit $20.4 million for 2010-2011 and that they expect to make at least $16 million through these donations.

It is not just donations that the foundation is asking for. Wikipedia is also looking for more contributors to the service. With close to a decade of operation, there is evidently quite a wear among the regular Wikipedia volunteers and the company is looking to get new volunteers to maintain the flow of new information posted to the service.

Click here to go ahead and make your donation to this wonderful service.