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Posted by: killhamster

Hello all, some of you may recognize me, some may not, that's probably irrelevant. I'm here to talk about what I'm doing nowadays, not my infamous past.

Since I'm sure you don't know, I'm one of two contributors to buttcoin.org, a website that is harshly critical of Bitcoin and the horrible community that has sprung up around it. If you don't know what Bitcoin is, here's a http://brokenlibrarian.org/bitcoin/. We're sarcastic and thoroughly mock every aspect of the "phenomenon," leaving no punches pulled.

Anyway, one of the frequent cries of anguish is that Wikipedia/the Wikimedia Foundation won't accept Bitcoin as a donation option and they are constantly rebuffed when they contact WP about it, with the now-familiar boilerplate response:

Whenever I've seen it, this block of text is usually followed by a furious screed about how someone will never ever donate to Wikipedia as a result and how the Wikimedia Foundation are shooting themselves in the foot by not accepting Bitcoin now, before it goes mainstream and becomes some sort of super money that's worth thousands and thousands of normal people dollars. I get the feeling, however, that these people wouldn't donate a thing anyway, even if the process were made explicitly simple for them according to their demands.

My question for you guys here (and in a few other places) is more about regular donations. Is there anywhere I can find the average donation amounts that regular boring folks give? I admittedly have not researched this much yet, I'm just starting to look into this and am looking for whatever feedback, input, and insights everyone has, especially those who are a bit more critical of the project.

Feel free to chase me away or shun me or whatever if I'm not wanted here. I can take it

Posted by: Text

SAN FRANCISCO, January 1, 2011 — Supported by half a million people from all over the world, the Wikimedia Foundation today announced it has exceeded its goal of $16 million USD to support Wikipedia and its sister projects for the 2010-11 fiscal year. To close the annual giving campaign, Wikipedia will transition to banners to both thank its global community of contributors and invite its 400 million readers to become volunteer editors.

In just 50 days, the shortest fundraiser in Wikimedia history, the Foundation received an average of $22 per individual donation from people living in about 140 countries, to reach its goal. This year, the Wikimedia Foundation received over 500,000 donations, more than doubling the number of individual donations in 2009, which garnered 230,000 total contributions.

Posted by: Retrospect

The amount of money they raise goes up frighteningly fast (well, there's one born every minute). it was about $25 million in 2010-11, $38 million in 2011-12 and $48 million in 2012-13.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Wikimedia_Foundation_financial_development_2003-2012.png

I'd say that plenty of people give a dollar or two, maybe ten, and a handful of corporate fuckwits give six-figure sums. I'd be surprised if there are many middling $500-$5000 donations.