San Francisco (CA) - The 2001 founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales of the Wikimedia Foundation, has made a personal plea on WikimediaFoundation.org to help the cash strapped organization. The site's annual expenses are "less than six million dollars," according to Wales, with only 23 employees.
"Once I built a website, made it run, made it race against time, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
They've been running a fundraiser for the past several weeks trying to raise exactly that amount. The thermometer stalled around $3.5 million before Wales plea. Now, just a few days later, it's over $5.8 million.
Wales says the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation runs Wikipedia, and was founded in 2003. Wikipedia may have run until 2005 or 2006 without a formal budget. Prior to that everything was run by volunteers. The first official employees were hired in 2005.
See the personal plea from Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation founder.
Thoughts to ponder
We here at TG Daily can't help but wonder how this quick success by Wales will spawn "copycat fundraisers" by other site owners. If users are willing to pay to keep their favorite free websites (like Wikipedia) running, how much are they willing to pay? Maybe Wales is kicking himself right now that he didn't ask for $8 million, or $12 million or $20 million.
Personally, I think $6 million is pretty cheap for the Internet's #9 site. And if $3.5M to $5.8M can come in a few days ($2.3 million), maybe it would've only taken a couple weeks to reach $8 million or more?
In addition, we wonder how far above $6 million it will go by itself. Are people keen on donating to support their favorite site for the sake of supporting it? Or will it be that once the published goals are reached, those who might've donated will step back and keep their money?
"Once I built a website, made it run, made it race against time, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
They've been running a fundraiser for the past several weeks trying to raise exactly that amount. The thermometer stalled around $3.5 million before Wales plea. Now, just a few days later, it's over $5.8 million.
Wales says the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation runs Wikipedia, and was founded in 2003. Wikipedia may have run until 2005 or 2006 without a formal budget. Prior to that everything was run by volunteers. The first official employees were hired in 2005.
See the personal plea from Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation founder.
Thoughts to ponder
We here at TG Daily can't help but wonder how this quick success by Wales will spawn "copycat fundraisers" by other site owners. If users are willing to pay to keep their favorite free websites (like Wikipedia) running, how much are they willing to pay? Maybe Wales is kicking himself right now that he didn't ask for $8 million, or $12 million or $20 million.
Personally, I think $6 million is pretty cheap for the Internet's #9 site. And if $3.5M to $5.8M can come in a few days ($2.3 million), maybe it would've only taken a couple weeks to reach $8 million or more?
In addition, we wonder how far above $6 million it will go by itself. Are people keen on donating to support their favorite site for the sake of supporting it? Or will it be that once the published goals are reached, those who might've donated will step back and keep their money?
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