Fundraising plan (2013–2014)

Fundraising goal

The Annual Budget for Fiscal Year 2013–14 set a donation target of $7,000, including $1,500 from event sponsorship and $5,000 from individual sponsorship. This does not include donations solicited from membership applicants. As of March, we have set our fundraising target for the remainder of this fiscal year at $3,500, given progress already made toward our revenue goals.

Donor constituencies

Why would a person or organization donate money?

1. The donor has a personal interest in the organization and its mission.

   This sort of fundraising makes use of the organization's social network. These donors are motivated to give to Wikimedia DC because they know people in the organization and wish it, or them, well. Event attendees may have a warm feeling toward us.

2. The donor has an economic interest in the success of the organization or its mission.

   This example is less applicable to our organization, but one example would be a business association donating to a political candidate because that candidate supports the interest of the business association. If Wikimedia DC provided a public service that resulted in increased economic activity for a particular sector, we could solicit contributions from this sector. A "functional" interest can be thought of as an economic interest. Enterprises using MediaWiki might want to work with us and support us. Public relations specialists who want to be able to edit properly and appropriately might want to work with us and support us. GLAM institution people want to be visible online. Tech company staff want to know how to use wikis and to represent their institution on Wikipedia.

3. The donor has an ideological interest in the organization or its mission.

   In Wikimedia DC's case, these could include donors who support our free knowledge mission, our connection to Wikipedia, open source software, open data standards, open government data, and addressing systemic biases in academia.

This year's fundraising plan focuses on reaching out to contacts we already have, encouraging them to give to Wikimedia DC. These solicitations should leverage the donor's personal or ideological interest in Wikimedia DC and its activities. In addition, we must thank our past contributors for their gifts, and encourage them to continue giving into the future. We also plan on holding a tech community outreach event, raising additional funds through corporate sponsorships.

Thanking donors

We recognize how important it is for Wikimedia DC to give thanks to its current base of donors. The first step is to prepare a standard thank-you letter on appropriate letterhead. Once we have done so, we should go through our records and make sure to thank each of our donors. We should then make it a regular practice to thank contributors upon giving. Our fiscal control policy requires acknowledgements for donations of $25 or greater, but we recommend it as a practice for donations of all sizes. We should continue our practice of crediting donors of $25 or greater in our annual report. Past donors should be thanked by June 1; this data should inform the development of the call list, since we do not want to ask for contributions from people who have already contributed.

Wikimedia DC should also consider hosting a fun donor recognition event, such as a networking reception with good art and music. This event should take place by November 1, in recognition of the donors of the past fiscal year.

Outreach to potential donors

During this process, the President will go through Wikimedia DC's current contact records (as kept in the Wikimedia DC Data folder on Google Drive) and determine who to make calls to according to the following criteria:

• Donor's relationship with the caller (family, friend, business associate, Wikipedian, etc.)
• Reason why the donor would be interested in contributing (they support a project the organization does, personal connections, etc.)
• A specific amount of money the donor could contribute; this amount should be seen by the donor as insignificant. An ideal median donation is $100.
• Whether the donor has already contributed that year

The President will be responsible for making these calls as a a high-level figure within the organization and as someone who is highly conversant in the activities of Wikimedia DC. These calls should not include specific project pitches, since this could cause the resulting donation to be a restricted gift.

With respect to larger donors, specific pitches for projects will be prepared and sent to potential large donors. We have identified two such donors as of writing, but more may arise. As general criteria, politically oriented groups should be funding specific events only, while general operating funds should be from non-political sources.

By June 1, the list of potential donors will be prepared. Phone calls should begin once Wikimedia DC has been recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt organization.

Tech community outreach

Holding events related to Wikipedia or broader issues affecting Wikipedia provide a potential revenue stream for Wikimedia DC. The Fundraising Committee thus proposes that Wikimedia DC hold a panel on open source technology in partnerships with technology firms that operate out of, or have offices in, Washington, DC. As DC-based representatives of Wikipedia we provide expertise on a massive and world-renowned technological endeavor and community of volunteers; this lends itself as a compelling subject manner for a panel. Such an event would satisfy our goal for community events as stated in our Annual Plan.

The event should be budgeted as to raise more money than it spends; how this works in practice depends on the budget of the event. For an evening panel with a networking element, this should not be very much, especially if we hold it in partnership with a venue to which we have pre-existing connections. In addition to soliciting sponsorships, we should charge a token amount for admission to the event such as $15. This admission fee could go toward a drink ticket for the attendees.

Our goal is to hold this event by August 1. Records of attendees and sponsors should be kept in a central location to facilitate further fundraising efforts.

Future prospects

• Can we have institutional benefactors? Board discussion suggests yes.
• But institutional members?

-- No. We need to remain a member based organization if we are volunteers without a paid staffer. Continual bylaw changes are exhausting and distract from building the encyclopedia, WP:NOT HERE If we have a paid staffer tasked with making us an accessible and responsive partner for other organizations on an ongoing basis, we can reconsider.

We are advised that institutional benefactors are an official category that is appropriate under DC law, whereas institutional members are not -- they'd have voting power and under DC law would require changes to our bylaws.

• We could conceivably raise funds for particular projects, such as the (hypothesized) scientific claim wiki. These might be called donations or be associated more precisely with the costs of the project.
• An endowment concept, is probably irrelevant to us for now. WMF is considering having an endowment. Board discussion rejected this idea: focus on operations for the coming year.