nsane.forums Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Back on November 15, Wikipedia announced a fundraising goal of $16 million to help fund its $20 million a year operating budget. For weeks, banner ads on the site showed the head of founder Jimmy Wales—which several Ars staffers found oddly disquieting—and asked users to donate. On January 1, the site said that the goal had been reached, making this Wikipedia's shortest fundraising drive ever. In announcing the fundraising drive, Wales called Wikipedia a "vital public resource for hundreds of millions of people. We've come to depend on it being there for us—free to use, without any bias or interference, and without advertising." 500,000 users from 140 countries agreed. With an average contribution of $22, they funded the $16 million goal in a month and a half. 2009's fundraiser, by contrast, raised only $8 million from 240,000 individual contributions. The money goes to pay the Wikimedia Foundation's roughly 50 employees and to pay the bills for its servers and other backend technologies. In a personal thank you note, Wales bragged that "Wikipedia is now the fifth most visited website in the world, but our staff, infrastructure and budget are just a fraction of any other top 10 website's." View: Original Article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadioActive Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 $20 million a year operating budgetWTF! Am I the only one who sees that as an absurd number to be spent on costs of running a non-profit website? I say they should start putting ads instead :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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