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.
4 replies on “Wikipedia Donations Expected To Cover $16 Million Of Operating Costs”
“This wonderful service”? Nice, objective journalism there.
I wonder when the news media will figure out that the Wikimedia Foundation spends on program services only 41 cents of every dollar they scam from donors, which earns them ONE STAR (out of four!) from Charity Navigator in organizational efficiency.
I also wonder why the news media never thought to cover the 2009 story of how the Wikimedia Foundation needed extra office space, and as if by magic, they hand-picked Jimmy Wales’ for-profit corporation to be their landlord, THEN obtained competitive bids, THEN asked Wales’ for-profit company to match the average of the competitive bids.
I too wonder why the media don’t seem to care that the 2010 market research study of past Wikimedia Foundation donors was awarded to the former employer of the WMF staffer running the project, without any competitive bidding whatsoever. And when the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation was asked how much the project cost, the guy asking the question was banned from the online discussion.
What’s nonobjective here? Wikipedia is without doubt the best online resource created in the past decade and I stand by it.
“And when the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation was asked how much the project cost, the guy asking the question was banned from the online discussion.”
The guy asking the question was Mr. Gregory Kohs, and he was banned before the start of the question period, because he is a persistent advocate against everything related to Wikimedia. If anyone’s nonobjective here, he is.
quick factcheck:
charity navigator gives 4 stars, and a score of 65.12 of 70.
citation needed:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11212