Wikipedia Raises $20 Million From Donations; Fundraising Banners Taken Down
The silent pleas from people associated with Wikipedia on the website have raised a whopping $20 million, with donations coming from over 1 million donors. Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that manages projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary and Wikisource announced these figures on Monday morning, saying that donations have periodically risen since its first fundraising campaign in 2003.
Wikipedia Donations & Fundraising 2011-12 at $20 Million
The recent funds earned by Wikimedia have broken records once again, proving the popularity of its free web services, the most popular being Wikipedia. Its websites now serve around 470 million people monthly, and has over 20 million articles in 282 languages. Indeed, a global presence is just one of the milestones this organization has achieved over the years. Wikipedia will celebrate its 11th anniversary in roughly two weeks.
The annual fundraiser is the organizations prime earning source that helps pay its bills. The organization has more than 10,000 volunteers working on Wikipedia and sister projects and around 80 full time employees. The organization, according to it’s 2011- 2012 annual plan, is looking to use these funds to become more mobile friendly, apart from installing new servers and hardware for improved functionality, acquire legal defense for the projects and support the ever-growing Wikimedia volunteer community.
According to its new annual plan, total planned spending for 2011-12 would be USD 28.3 million. A major portion of this is covered from the fundraiser, and the rest comes from the regular donations from institutions such as the Sloan Foundations and numerous small donors. Donations in the latter form happen throughout the year for Wikimedia.
Wikimedia is also facing the challenge of finding more editors for their projects, especially women and people from the Global South, since the number of active editors has been on a decline. Wikimedia also aims to double page view. Achieving these two goals is the top priority for Wikimedia in 2011-12.