See also: Financial vision

Under Strategic Planning Guiding Summary, Important challenges, we find the statement

"The question of financial sustainability and organizational models sit along side the technology challenge with a significant concern regarding the lack of a renewable and reliable revenue source to support operations and investments over time as well as questions about how the movement should organize itself into different roles."

What that means is - without money all the rest of the strategy talk is just - so much talk.

Wikipedia (et al) have a great deal to offer the world, and this Strategy dicussion is very valuable. But...

The strategy discussion is useless if Wikpedia goes broke. WikiPedia is constantly asking for donations, some would say begging, just to stay alive, let alone grow.

We need a real strategy for funding, or much of the rest is really so much Hot air.

So strong do I feel that I will add Strategy for Funding (link now deprecated) at a high level to this Wiki. Sorry if that is stepping on some toes.--Richardb 00:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

What strategies do we have for funding Wikipedia.

Observed Current Strategies

constant appeals for donations.

Proposed Strategies

Advertising

Advertising has been proposed many times as a solution to our funding needs. but has constantly been rejected. I believe this rejection is probably based on some deeply held philosophical grounds. But, just as we get constant calls for donations, we need to constantly ask "why not Advertising", and the rejection of advertising needs to be constantly justified.

Also, there are many ways of using Advertising for funding, and perhaps some of these can overcome the philosophical rejections. Such proposals should be seriously considered as part of the Future Strategy Debate

There are a few proposals for Advertising for funding out there. A very attractive one is - *Proposal:Users Can Choose to Take Advertising - where users can choose if they get no ads (and presumably make donations ?), or they can choose to accept some tailored set of ads, knowing this helps pay for WikiMedia Foundation.

Wikipedia Fund

Proposal to create a larger fund for Wikipedia through existing and some alternative strategies focusing on local and large scale collaboration. The fund would be managed by a third party or invested in secure return investment. It would have to be large enough to keep wikimedia foundation self-sufficient for a long time preferably being run and maintained like a university or institutional endowment.

For Detailed Proposal: Proposal:Wikipedia Fund

Theo10011 03:02, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Allow Regular Continued Donations

Most UK charities encourage donors to set up a direct debit or standing order arrangement. Income from this kind of arrangement is sustained and can be used to plan longer term, as well as adding up to considerably more than individual one-off donations which have to be asked for again and again.

I'm adding this section because I want to donate in this way, but have not been given the option and having complained about it twice was directed here. I don't want adverts on Wikipedia, and have already ad-blocked Jimmy's pleading countenance because I will never ever consider a one-off donation via Paypal. Rant over.

Biguana 12:22, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Others

Please feel free to add links to your proposals and ideas.

References