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:
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.
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.