Wikipedia Saved for another few months with $6.2m Cash injection
Posted in News by admin on January 6th, 2009 The massive user generated encyclopedia Wikipedia will live on for another year thanks to $6.2 million in donations.
The record amount has surpassed the $6 million expectations of the non-profit organisation, the Wikipedia Foundation, after Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales led the charge with a personal appeal in December.
There were concerns that the foundation would be closing the book, so to speak, on the encyclopedia, as the $6m goals seemed pretty far away even nearing the end of 2008, so Wales made the plea on the website instead of the usual web donation banner to save Wikipedia.
Nine days after launching the appeal, the Foundation had raised over $2 million from 50,000 donations, and by January 2nd over 125,000 individual donors had raised a further $4.5 million to reach the final sum. Wikipedia’s founder labelled the donations as the “most ambitious and successful campaign in the history of the Foundation.”
When the fiscal year ends on June 30th, 2009, analysts predict that Wikipedia will need around $5,974,000 to survive. The cash will be used to ensure the companies technical infrastructure remains able to cope with demand, that the can maintain their 23 members of staff, and that they can keep running the Wikipedia Academies and in-person workshops.
Wales released a clearly heart felt thank you message to those that donated: “Your continued support will also serve as a much-needed financial safety net if economic conditions continue to worsen globally…You have proven that Wikipedia matters to you, and that you support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising. You’ve helped make and keep Wikipedia available for the whole world.
“I deeply appreciate your support.”
The Foundations website informs people of how exactly the money will be spent, and the financial report will automatically be sent to any one who donated to the Foundation.
Something that is very important for users is that the website remains ad-free. The open source nature of the website is appealing and Wikipedia is the fourth most visited website on the internet in terms of number of users, according to figures from ComScore.
It’s good to see that Wikipedia has won this battle, but sadly it has not won the war. With the world in financial ruin, money will be too tight to mention when the cash runs out. I for one hope that the website can remain, as it’s a great source of information, but with Jimmy Wales even have to get down and contact donors directly you have to say the future looks bleak.
Monetising a website that has no advertising will always be a problem. It’s down to ethics, but to be honest how many websites these days have advertisements that you ignore. I’ve seen so many these days that I don’t even notice ads. So maybe Wikipedia could have some advertising to solve there problems.
