Fundraising 2011/Test Updates/November/23
2011 Fundraiser Launch Update
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The 2011 fundraiser kicked off with a strong start. In the first 24 hours, Wikimedia donors worldwide showed their support by donating USD $1.2 million. Yes, this is a record number of dollars raised in a single day by the Wikimedia Foundation (previous record was $790,853.48), but the bigger accomplishment is the number of supporters. Over 65,000 Wikipedia users donated in a single day from over 150 countries around the world. Our previous record number of donors in a single day was 26,082 from December 31, 2010.
We're now about one week and nearly $7 million into the fundraiser. Last year, it took about 25 days to raise this much.
We launched this year's campaign with the appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Throughout these past few months of testing many different messages, we found that Jimmy's appeal was the strongest message to kick off the fundraiser. In the last days before the launch of the campaign, we discovered that adding a green background to Jimmy's photo had a big boost for click and donation rates. We're still experimenting with designs and messages and will discover plenty of improvements to make along the way.
Just last night, we put up an appeal from Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris and the message is performing on par with Jimmy's appeal. We're now at the phase in the campaign where we will be highlighting stories from many different Wikimedians to help raise our budget. Over the past several months, Wikipedia volunteer editors and Wikimedia Foundation staff members have been working with the fundraising team to craft appeals so the 2011 fundraiser can rely as much as possible on a variety of voices from Wikimedians around the world. We owe a big thanks to everyone who has participated so far.
There are plenty more stories to look out for in the coming days. We're also still working on adding in more stories we haven't found yet to this year's campaign. If you're game to share your story to appeal to readers for donations, please sign up to get involved or channel your creativity and help draft an appeal from the Wikimedia community.
We still have a long way to go but we're feeling really thankful to Wikipedia users and contributors who have shown their support and pushed us off with a strong start.