When in doubt, just ask. That is what Wikipedia did and now has managed to achieve its fundraising goal of $6 million via donations from site users and will continue to stay online this year.
So why does one of the world’s five most popular web properties ask for financial support from its users? Wikimedia founder explains why they were asking for donations earlier to support Wikipedia
Wikipedia is built differently from almost every other top 50 websites. We have a small number of paid staff, just twenty-three. Wikipedia content is free to use by anyone for any purpose. Our annual expenses are less than six million dollars. Wikipedia is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which I founded in 2003.
At its core, Wikipedia is driven by a global community of more than 150,000 volunteers – all dedicated to sharing knowledge freely. Over almost eight years, these volunteers have contributed more than 11 million articles in 265 languages. More than 275 million people come to our website every month to access information, free of charge and free of advertising.
TGdaily says Wikipedia launched a “please save our website” fund drive campaign on or about Christmas Eve. At that point, they had raised $3.8 million dollars of their $6 million goals. In just five days, as of January 1, 2009, they had surpassed the $6 million goals by raising an additional $2.3 million!
That is surely a happy new year start for them. At least Wikipedia has survived the economic recession this year…