[Foundation-l] Fundraising banner ad

Tue Oct 23 15:04:15 UTC 2007

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Delirium wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> I understand your frustration, but it is misplaced. This is not about
>> "the Foundation vs. the community", it is about a community trying to
>> find the best ways to sustain itself.
>>   
> 
> I've been here for nearly 5 years and *I'm* not even sold on that, so I 
> could see why not everyone else is either. The servers at 
> *.wikipedia.org are not going to shut down if the fundraiser comes short 
> of funds,

Perhaps, but only because we'd end up selling advertising space (eww) or
becoming heavily beholden to a single massive donor with strings attached.

For comparison, see the Mozilla Foundation's update on their finances:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainability.html

Their expenditures are much higher than ours, with a different balance
(more people, less hosting), and their revenue is much, *much* bigger --
and almost all from a single partnership with Google.

It's cool that they're riding high on the Google wave, but it's also a
precarious position; if Google pulled out, they'd lose almost all their
revenue. Maybe Google's Not Evil and that's no problem, but maybe
they'll change their mind, or lose interest, or try to throw their
weight around, and it'll be harder to find an alternate source of
funding once they're so invested in that one.

Wikimedia has so far maintained a serious commitment to remaining
independent, with a diverse donor base.

> So it sounds like the money is needed for something else besides simply 
> sustaining the site, yet this has never really been "sold" to the 
> community in a way that most of us are on board with.

Not really; the 2007-2008 budget primarily covers actual hosting,
staffing, organizational overhead, and Wikimania conference costs, with
a tiny sliver of new cute projects.

If we do bring in a lot of extra cash, we might be able to get more
involved in those things directly -- partnering with organizations to
help the starving children read an encyclopedia or whatever -- but
primarily we run a web site, and that's what our budget projections and
fundraising targets are aiming at.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
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