Wikipedia seeks to raise $7.5M in ‘Wikipedia Forever’ campaign

November 10, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

wikipediaThe Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that manages Wikipedia, is passing the hat around in its annual fundraising campaign. The foundation blasted through its $6 million goal last year (and eventually raised $6.9 million), so it’s settings its sights higher this time, with a target of $7.5 million.

Wikimedia’s head of communications Jay Walsh said the campaign has a different emphasis this year, too — it’s not just about paying the site’s operating costs for another year, but also figuring out ways to turn Wikipedia into something that will (yes, it sounds a little cheesy) stand the test of time. Hence the “Wikipedia Forever” fundraising theme. Specifically, Walsh said Wikimedia plans to spend more of the money on long-term investments, such as staff that can reach out to new communities of contributors and research into making the site easier to edit.

More generally, Walsh said, “This time of year, rather than just hoping to pay our bills, we want readers to think about what it means that all that information came from people who gave their time and energy.”

As far as getting attention for its fundraising efforts, Wikimedia will do more to outreach this year on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, Walsh said, and people can also make donations via text message on their mobile phone. Still, the key promotion will be the same as last year — a banner ad at the top of Wikipedia asking users to give.

Those ads should be going up any second now. In the meantime, you can visit this web page to donate.

Next Story: Google-Admob: A storm for Weather.com?
Previous Story: Chrysler scraps EV program, forsaking bailout promises

Bookmark and Share

Photo of Anthony Ha

About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • The site is getting slower and slower. They should consider displaying atleast text ads and get some more bandwidth.
  • Why should an ageing application that is out of touch with how content is created and generated be allowed to go on "Forever" ?
    Should Wikipeda be given a free pass from competitors that have a better product because they are a non profit ?
    Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the rest compete against one another, and becuase of this users benefit from innovation. I think that it is time that Wikipedia have competion.
  • I'm not sure what "allowed" has to do with it. Though the tech may be aging, Wikipedia is incredibly popular because people find the content useful.

    On the competition front, Google tried with Knol. That didn't go so well.
  • Knol is a poorly done sudo copy of Wikipedia. It could never have worked. Just like Wikipedia Knol was a copy of an existing media.
    We embrace Wikipedia now because it a familiar representation of a non digital object that we are comfortable with. There is a tendency to copy non electronic media scenarios into electronic media (Wikipedia= Encyclopedia); until we stumble upon innovating something that is a closer fit. For me twitter is a very good example of this. It is something that fits into the electronic medium of the internet. The fit so close that many people "use" it without knowing if twitter has any utility. For me Twitters only point point of initial existing is the internet, and this is why it seems to work so well.

    I will argue that Wikipedia is a first evolution of this and that it will not be the last or only one.

    By "allowed" I mean that Wikipedia is not a sacred. For me true innovation means that any thing that is created and exist should be looked at as only a step towards something that is better. To move towards the next phase of information creation and consumption Wikipedia must have competition and journalist and developers must not give them a free pass. Would Google receive smile and pats on the back from journalist if they started a campaign with the slogan "Google forever" ? I hope not.
  • doityourselfman
    MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikipedia, is free.
    You can just download it, and create your own site. Sudo create wikipedia_killer
  • To create a "Wikipedia Killer" you have to change the game. For me this means that you cannot use the crippled ship that is MediaWiki.
  • Mike
    And "Wikipedia Forever" is taken down within eight hours of launch after different projects start posting about how universally hated it was. The excuse is "we didn't do some tech stuff right and we're taking it down" but I don't think they want to risk another backlash like this.