when I was checking out a link in another post I get this :
To all our readers in the U.S.:
Time is running out in 2016 to help Wikipedia. When I made Wikipedia a non-profit, people warned me I’d regret it. Over a decade later, it’s the only top ten site run by a non-profit and a community of passionate volunteers. Has it crossed my mind how much money we could have made if it had ads? Sure. But I believe people wouldn’t want to build it and we wouldn’t be able to trust it. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads. We’re sustained by donations averaging about $15. Now is the time we ask. If everyone reading this right now gave $3, we wouldn’t need to show these banners for years to come. That’s right, the price of a coffee is all we need. It’s easy to ignore this message; most people do. But I hope you’ll take a minute to think about how useful Wikipedia is in your life. Please help us keep Wikipedia online and growing. Thank you — Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder
My question is these pbs style requests normal ? and are they factual or is it the normal "our the sky is falling so send us support or were finished " a lot of places that live on donations do every year
I’ve wondered about their finances too. Are they really desperate or are they doing ok?
We shouldn’t take Wikipedia for granted. I remember when IMDB was called the Cardiff movie database and non-profit. It got sold and I think Amazon owns it.
Same thing could happen to Wikipedia. I donate a few bucks once a year.
Wikipedia does the donation thing every year; it’s nothing new. They are not going broke; they are actually taking in more money in donations than they are spending, and they are putting the excess into savings of various sorts. Wikimedia is the parent non-profit that runs, among other ventures, Wikipedia; Wikimedia’s financial statements are here.
In my opinion, I am finding the tone of the solicitations to be more nagging, guilt-trippy, and generally more annoying than in years past.
Lots of charities do appeals like this in December because people in the U.S. looking for tax donations have to make their contributions by 12/31 and because the Christmas season seems to make people more charitable. A charity I help run will get 75% of its donations between Thanksgiving and 12/31.
According to Charity Navigator, the Wikimedia Foundation brought in about $77 million in donations last year and spent about $52 million. I don’t have their balance sheet but I assume based on this surplus that they aren’t in dire straights. Even still, Wikimedia will need more money to keep running so they are asking for more money. If they don’t ask until they are almost out of money, they run the risk of just disappearing overnight. This isn’t how responsible charities run. They try to plan for the future and have at least a little more money than they need tomorrow.
This is just one more of the “Things grown-ups do that children don’t”.
If you enjoy a service that costs money to operate, PAY it a few bucks.
Hate “fake news”? What are you doing to support real news?
Bemoaning the loss of the old-line newspapers is fine.
How about subscribing to a news agency once in a while?
Google famously said its news service (news dot google dot com) would never pay for news.
It will be a cold day when I throw money to Fox or CNN, but I do subscribe (full price) to NYT.
I live on SS (now “retirement”, originally “disability”) due to osteoarthritis.
If I can scrape together the pennies, most of the people on these boards can do the same.
Sadly though — and inevitably, although the model is still valid — a proportion of Wikipedia is fake.
And it doesn’t matter if onlye a 100th part of sack of grain is mouldy: it matters if that’s the bit you eat.
And I hate the idea that I’m supposed to pay just because I use something. That money can better be spent on someone else who needs it.
It might be different if the people who actually contribute to Wikipedia got paid. But the organization as a whole does not need money, and everyone working there is rather well off.
I give money out of necessity, or because I think that it is needed. No other reason.
This is written to look like it’s saying “time is running out to save Wikipedia,” but literally all it says is that 2016 is almost over. It’s just basic begging from someone doing fundraising.
But guests are necessary as well. If you limit your base to paying members only, you have issues. First is you tend to have people with the same mind set. This means you wind up with a bunch of people saying what you think, hardly makes interesting reading.
Second you need all sorts of people to keep a site or business running. Think of it as having ladies night. If you don’t give ladies free drinks (an incentive) to come in, then they won’t. This leaves only men. The men want the ladies to talk to, if they aren’t there, they will go where the ladies are, so you NEED to offer free stuff.
Third you need people who are going to donate the time too. Fair enough, time without money is useless, but all the money in the world isn’t going to populate Wikipedia who got all that information on their site without paying anyone for their work.
Bear in mind that you can’t donate money to Wikipedia. I know they make it sound like that’s what you’re doing. It’s not. You’re donating money to the Wikimedia Foundation, who disburse your money however they see fit across a bunch of Wiki sites.