Just 13,787 have donated so far, so about 1/1000th of a second's worth of readers. How long has this telethon been going on because it looks like Wikipedia is in serious trouble...

It always looks like this. They will just keep on asking for donations until they get enough. If they don't get enough, then that banner asking for donations will just keep going indefinitely.

And ultimately if that isn't enough, they'll have to find some other way to raise money, or else they will simply cut down on their services. I don't know what they do.

I think the banner ad is the smartest thing they have done...since the beginning.

Without funding, the whole thing falls off a cliff.

WP will shut down if the money machine does not work, and/or, the foundation will have to team up with a money source and advertising system. Ergo, the merger I have spoken about several times.

Advertising; Banner ads, are what makes the internet function.

To get the kind of operational money that they need (which implies large sums arriving at regular dates, and not getting $2.50 out of Janey's or Jimmy's lunch money twice a year), they need grant support from either established foundations or governments. I remember seeing Floflo asking for people to help writing grants on the English list serve and basically saying that they currently did not have the knowledge or the time to do any grant writing.

Now, Jimbo also mentioned having some "matching" grants, which means that he had donors who had said that they would match contributions with contributions of their own...but even if everything that they've gotten so far is doubled, that still doesn't add up to their budget.

And Jimbo has not announced the names of these "matching grant" donors, which is usually done BEFORE you start the fund-raising to motivate people to give (the idea being "if you give now, you're really giving TWICE as much"...). So, either they've flubbed this part of their "communication strategy' (if you can call it that...) or Jimbo doesn't have those commitments yet.....

So, I don't think that they have a Plan B thought out yet. The whole mess is probably doing to fall into Sue G's lap with a post-it saying "here's the old budget. Please cut 75% of it..." or something to that effect.

What was the title of that book? "The Cult of the Amateur", was it?

WOW : The banner ad is just for the "funding raising" period. If they don't take that down afterwards, they're going to get in hot water with the more vocal people who oppose ads on WP....

Thank you, all, for continuing to focus on this topic. It's a very important one, because failure to capture sufficient funding for the grandiose budget increase from 2007 to 2008 will be a rebuke on the current leadership's direction with the project.

They will then have to start asking serious questions like:

1. Why are we flying Jimbo all over the globe when he's not returning with any substantial checks in hand?

2. Why did we just up and decide to move to San Francisco, one of the most expensive locations on the planet?

3. Why did we bring in this Executive Director from Canada and promise her and her staff over $500,000 next year, when we might not even fund-raise enough money to cover the operational expenses?

4. How can we cut 65% of this budget without looking like fools to have proposed the $4.6 million in the first place?

Keep your eye on the other thread where I go into some detail about the problems of attrition in longitudinal fundraising campaigns. There will be an update every Tuesday morning.

Oh, and remember, Jimbo sez: this year's campaign is "the highest we have ever seen".

Do you believe the emperor with no clothes?

Greg

Wikipedia went for quantity over quality, and for popular culture and controversy over scholarly articles. Those choices drive a lot of ephemeral traffic to the site, which costs bandwidth. It was probably a poor idea for an inadequately funded business model.

In my early days on WP, when I saw these donation campaigns going, I'd get a little worried: will they be able to raise enough money? What if they don't? Then I realized that they always raised enough money, so there was nothing to worry about. Now, with this huge and arguably excessive budget, I figure even if they don't raise enough, they can get by just fine as far as the core mission goes, so it's still no big deal.

I also think the donation banners have gotten bigger and bolder in the last few days. Maybe they're disappointed with the pace.

The problem is that they need the donations that much. A not-for-profit cannot live on this kind of funding. Before they hired an executive director, they should have hired somebody who had experience in writing grants and then had him/her go after foundations/government money full time.

There are problems with this, however. When you start approaching these kind of people, they want to see your financial statement...and not the kind of financial statement that WMF currently publishes They want to see a certified copy done by a CPA. So, already, these kind of donors are going to be dragging their heels.

Now, if Wikipedia was really on the level, they would have immediately seen that the US government does not fund this kind of thing, but the EU loves this kind of project. They should have incorporated as a foundation in the UK or Germany and then they would have a really good chance to get some juicy EU grant money. An American NFP is just not going to get funded by these people, and if by chance it does, it's not going to look good by the good EU tax payers for are footing the bill....

So, what does that leave us with? The "begging" approach. The banners can't get any bigger, but maybe they'll start the kind of ads you see on ED these days, which you have to click through....

In any case, there is no way in hell that they're going to get this budget. Unless Jimbo has some big donors up his sleave and this is just chump change...

Jimbo (presumably the emporer) without clothes is not a pretty mental picture for me. (yes, I know what you meant, but still)..

HEY, there's a great fund-raising idea for ya! How about having the WP crowd do what that French Rugby team did and have their all-male nude calender! We can have Moreschi be Mr. January (he can cover his naughty bits to leave people wondering whether he has his balls or not...), JzG can be Mr. February, Fred Bauder Mr. March etc etc etc...with Jimbo as the centerfold....

Since WP was built on exploiting the naîve young ladies who posed for Bomis, it would be poetic justice, in a way....

That's another set of images I didn't need.

I think WP is in big trouble. The drop in Wikipedia's article creation is not just a blip, but as Greg noted, it points to a real credibility problem with WP that no-one seems able to address.