Fundraising

Who are we?

Current fundraising activities

Operated by Wikimedia Foundation

For the Financial Year 24/25 Q1/2 2024/25 campaigns Please note that all banner examples can now be found on the respective community collaboration pages found below.

• India (Emails 22nd of July to the 15th of August, Banners 13th of August to the 10th of September). Here is an example email: Email 1, Email 2, Email 3, Email 4
• The Netherlands (Emails 29th of July to the 17th of August, Banners 3rd of September to 1st of October). Here are some example emails: Email 1 en, Email 1 nl, Email 2 en, Email 2 nl, Email 3 en, Email 3 nl, Email 4 en, Email 4 nl
• France (Emails 9th of September to 4th of October, Banners 3rd to 31st of October). Here are some example emails: Email1 fr, Email2 fr, Email 3 fr, Email 4 fr, Email 1 en, Email 2 en, Email 3 en, Email 4 en
• English campaign in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US (Emails September - November, Banners December) - community collaboration information will be added in Q1. Here are some example emails (French Canada send): Email 1, Email 2, Email 3
• Italy (Emails 10th to the 25th of February, Banners 19th of March to the 16th of April). Here are some example emails: Email 1 en, Email 1 it, Email 2 en, Email 2 it, Email 3 en, Email 3 it, Email 4 en, Email 4 it

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-fundraising ^connect (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

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

2023/2024 Fundraising Report

Q2 saw our biggest annual fundraising campaign in six English speaking countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US) taking place. We fundraised via several channels, from emails to previous donors to banners on Wikipedia, and also piloted new channels such as SMS and postal mail. Additionally, we introduced an annual recurring donation option, a feature often requested by donors. We launched a community collaboration page in July 2024 and have been engaging with community members there and at in person conferences. You can find a detailed round-up of the campaign on the community collaboration page.

We also ran a banner and email fundraising campaign in France, for which we created a community collaboration page and hosted a community call. We engaged with the community around a new headline and tested messaging suggested by the community.

We started off the new fiscal year with launching the community collaboration page for our English campaign. Our English campaign runs in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and is our biggest fundraising campaign of the year. On the collaboration page we invite volunteers to work together on banner messaging ideas ahead of the campaign, during our pre-test phase.

This year we attended Wikimania and ran a banner fundraising messaging workshop. We had about 25 participants at the workshop and had a good conversation with them. We heard some new points from the volunteers in the room. Such as the suggestions to:

• Use more visuals in our banners, particularly photos of editors and other examples of "Wikimedians in action."
• Highlight the work of the community in the banners
• Include a goal thermometer or other specifics on our targets for a given fundraising campaign
• Personalize banner messaging more based on article category, geographic location, etc.
• Encourage editing as a secondary call to action, which we already do on our Thank You page and can probably pull forward into the banner flow for non-donors.

In order to build a long-term sustainable revenue model, we are looking to diversify our fundraising channels. This year, in the U.S., we are launching two new ways for people to give, SMS donations and direct mail. Both channels are common and widespread fundraising methods in the U.S and help us serve different audiences. New formats –like mail– will also allow us to bring broader awareness to our nonprofit mission.

In Q1 we also ran email and banner fundraising campaigns in India and the Netherlands. For both campaigns we created collaboration pages, engaged with volunteers on- and off- wiki and worked together to ensure localized banner fundraising messages. In Q2 we will be publishing our latest fundraising report with insights from the past fiscal year.

You can find all past and current collaboration pages above.

See also

• Erik Moeller and Domas Mituzas on fundraising since 2010

• Fundraising