Fundraising
Who are we?
The Teams
Central
Working across teams and with the Partnerships team
-
Lisa Seitz-Gruwell
Chief Advancement Officer -
Megan Hernandez
Vice President of Advancement -
Nick Wilson
Community Relations Specialist -
Guillaume Paumier
Principal Program Manager
Online Fundraising
-
Pats Pena
Director of Online Fundraising -
Caitlin Cogdill
Senior Fundraising Manager -
Sam Patton
Senior Fundraising Manager -
Evelyn Martin
Senior Payments Manager -
Katie Haggard
Jr Creative Associate -
Moska Shaver
Fundraising Email Associate -
Peter Coombe
Lead Production Manager -
Sadok Cervantes
UX Designer -
Thea Skaff
Program Manager -
Camille de Nes
Global Campaign Manager
Foundations & Major Gifts
-
Caitlin Virtue
Senior Director of Development -
Danny Kaufman
Development Outreach Manager -
Leanne Schreibstein
Development Associate -
Jerry Kim
Events Projects Manager -
Jonathan Curiel
Senior Development Comms Manager -
Nora Nichols
Development Data Associate -
Rosie Lewis
Development Analyst
Fundraising Operations
-
Jessica Robell
Director of Fundraising Operations -
Michael Beattie
Donor Services Manager -
Kristie Robinson
Donor Services Associate -
Sandra Hust
Donor Services Associate
Endowment
-
Jason Adams
Planned Giving Specialist
See also: Fundraising Technology
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
Operated by Wikimedia Foundation
- Netherlands Banners: July 7th - August 4th 2020
- Japan Email: July 7th - August 4th 2020
- India Banners: July 28th - August 25th 2020
- France Emails: August 12th - September 9th 2020
- Japan Banners: September 1st - September 29th 2020
- US, GB, NZ, AU, CA, IE Emails: September 14th - December 11th 2020
- France Banners: September 29th - October 27th 2020
- US, GB, NZ, AU, CA, IE - Banner Testing (1-3 hours, one to several times a week): July 2020 onwards
Germany
Operated by Wikimedia Deutschland
- Fundraising testing: Juli 2020 - November 2020
- Fundraising Banners: November 2020 - December 31 2020
Switzerland
Operated by Wikimedia Switzerland
- Fundraising Banner Testing: August 1st - November 15th 2020
- Fundraising Banner Fundraising: November 15th - December 30th 2020
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 bugs in Phabricator, please use the #wikimedia-fundraising 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
Articles, videos etc. (here you find relevant articles about Wikimedia fundraising and finance)
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 Q3 Update
In Q3 we worked with a range of communities to prepare for fundraising campaigns starting in Q4. We created community collaboration pages with affiliates, engaged communities on wiki, and in community calls.
We had plenty of email campaigns during Q3, which included the Thank You email campaign (for donors from the English campaign in Q2), an email sent to Austria, Norway, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malaysia, and Belgium, an email sent to Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, as well as and email sent to some of our English campaign donors about the Endowment.
We also started our campaign in Brazil at the end of Q3.
Some highlights from the Brazil campaign:
Brazil payments improvements: Last year we worked on reintegrating DLocal, our LATAM payment processor. Modernizing our payments integration had a significant impact on the Brazil campaign leading to a 32% increase in payments conversion rate and an increase in recurring giving! This newer integration is having a lasting impact. Donors are also sharing their appreciation for Pix as a payment option (see donor quote below!). Pix is the most popular way donors like to contribute from Brazil!
Finally, I'm thrilled to share that Brazilian donors are incredibly grateful for the Pix payment option, allowing those eager to donate to finally contribute!
In Q4 we are launching banner campaigns across many countries and we will also start preparing for the next English campaign by engaging the English Wikipedia communities from Q1 on, with the start of our pre-tests.
2023/24 Q2 Update
During Q2 we ran two major fundraising campaigns. Our annual English fundraising campaign in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US had both emails sent to previous donors as well as banners on English Wikipedia for non logged in readers. From Q1 onwards, when the pre-tests for our biggest campaign started, we collaborated with the community on English Wikipedia through a dedicated community collaboration page. A few highlights of the collaborative results we achieved together, are:
- We introduced language around the role of Wikipedia in relation to AI to our banners
- We worked around the concept of time sensitivity to encourage readers to donate now rather than later
- We increased clarity that the messages come from WMF by adding our organizational logo to all banners.
- We made it easier for readers to stop seeing banners for example increasing the duration for which a reader could dismiss banners for
- We made improvements to our payment methods and options, including tests to simplify the Venmo checkout flow, and a major milestone of releasing in-app Apple Pay transactions with the Wikipedia Apps team.
- Donors also saw an invitation to start editing on the Thank You page, after they donated. This led to 4,398 new account creations, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours (a constructive edit means the edit wasn’t subsequently reverted within 48 hours).
The English banner campaign reached the revenue target and our progress towards the annual goal is looking good. We are currently at around 75% to our annual goal and still have campaigns in both Q3 and Q4 coming up that will help us reach the goal by the end of the financial year. We’ll carry learnings from the English campaign forward as we collaborate with local communities on the upcoming campaigns.
We also ran our annual fundraising banner campaign in Italy during October. For this we collaborated with the community on Italian Wikipedia and hosted a community call.
Looking ahead, we are engaging and collaborating with the communities across the globe (you can find the list of all collaboration pages that are currently live, on meta) to ensure that our fundraising campaigns are received well locally and that our communities have the input they would like to have.
See also
- Erik Moeller and Domas Mituzas on fundraising since 2010