$6.2 Million: Wikipedia Reaches Fundraising Goal for 2008
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the immensely popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia, just announced that it has reached its fundraising goal for 2008, which will allow the foundation to cover its operating expenses for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2009. Overall, a total of 125,000 donors gave over $6.2 million during 2008, though in December alone, after a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, 50,000 individuals contributed more than $2 million.
According to Jimmy Wales, these donations will be used to pay for the day-to-day operations of the Wikimedia Foundation, including the costs of hosting and bandwidth, as well as the salary of its small staff of only 23 people. The Wikimedia foundation will also use these funds to support outreach events like the Wikipedia Academies and to help its volunteer community.
No Advertising
The Wikimedia Foundation has always declined to run advertising on its pages. Given that it is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, it could surely make more than $6.2 million in revenue every year, but the organization, and Jimmy Wales in particular, have always vehemently rejected this idea in favor of direct donations from users.
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I never understood the problem with advertising on Wikipedia. It takes away from the academic purity of wikipedia but the practicality far outweighs it.
Relying on donations does keep it much leaner as ad-revenue would make it a huge money maker leading to bloat.
Much in Wikipedia is false info. Have a look at the large number of articles against India and about 'anti-Christian violence' in India. They are all copy-pasted from Christian sites. There is no neutrality.
If you try any neutral editing, a group of Baptists and Catholic Admins gang up against you and Block you. It is all funny.
While I commend wikipedia's efforts to resist advertising on their site, I think eventually they will have to crack. They attract far too many eyeballs to resist the temptation in the long run.
If they are able avoid in page advertising, I have a feeling they might end up in partnerships similar to what popurls did with intel at http://blue.popurls.com/
Or they'll be bought by one of the big internet players.
Thank you to all the people who donated to keep Wikipedia up and running!
In response to the advertising issue:
1. Ads are annoying. For many publications off and online, they are a necessary evil that readers must bear if they are to receive the content they enjoy. But they still suck.
2. Ads create not just the appearance of a commercial site, but an actual conflict of interest. Every company I know that relies on AdSense placed around user generated content lives in fear of Google (or whomever they advertise with). If you work OTRS or just read our help pages, you already know many people are confused about how Wikipedia works. Even the appearance of a profit motive is a bad thing for Wikipedia, and is in direct conflict with our ability to freely distribute educational works.
3. Wikipedia is not a company that can diversify to avoid the financial hit of a drop in ad revenue. We have only one product, our articles, and our defining mission is to give those away for free.
4. Even if you have hiding of ads for logged in users (like some wikis do), thousands of angry Wikipedians would leave in protest. This has already happened, such as when the Spanish Wikipedia considered ads early on. The ad-free fork formed by the people who left quickly began to outgrow the Spanish Wikipedia until the proposal to use ads was rejected. In other words, the decision to use advertising rests with the volunteers who work on Wikipedia, and we won't do it unless we're forced to in order to survive. That doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.
Regardless whether wikipedia can keep it free for ever or not, their mission to share the knowledge for free with anyone is incredible and respectable.
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It astonishes me that they can raise such a huge amount of money through donations, but I also wonder how long they'll be able to keep doing that. I think advertising, if done properly (in an unobtrusive but clearly marked manner) will eventually be what they'll need to turn to.
This is amazing, but is it a viable model for the long term?
"Jimmy Wales in particular, have always vehemently rejected this idea in favor of direct donations from users."
Don't be fooled by the Jimmy Wales self-promotion machine. That's not true at all. Early on, Jimmy Wales has very much open to advertising, and his other wiki ventures base their business models around advertising.
Came across this amusing and biting article about the wikipedia donations: http://www.drama20show.com/2009/01/02/thank-you-from-wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales/
I love wikipedia, but there are some entries that have become political battle grounds and the information is not what I would call "encyclopediac". I have run into this with many niches including my ">cleaning business consulting niche. I guess that is inevitable with the idealism of the pluralistic techno Utopian movement.
Congratulation to Wikipedia. I really love Wikipedia; the source of Many new knowledge
I don't understand this Wikipedia's obsession with being financed through donations only. Unobtrusive advertising would greatly contribute to Wikipedia's cash flow without repelling users.
The advertising on Wikipedia debate is a good one. Didn't one estimate say they could make 50-100mil /month? (found it http://www.techielife.com/wikipedia-almost-reaches-6-million-target-just-add-ads-already/internet/web-sites/aditya/2008-12-31/) also saw good article on funraiser's past and future on wikilog