The majority of funding for the Wikimedia Foundation comes from individual donors all around the world. These donations allow the Foundation to provide the world-class technology infrastructure that supports 22 billion monthly views to Wikipedia and its sister projects, protect free knowledge globally through legal and advocacy efforts, and support the incredible volunteer editors who have built 65 million articles across more than 300 languages. In the past year, the Foundation has been focusing heavily on improvements to our products and technology, particularly the needs of experienced editors. Going forward into the FY 2025-2026 annual plan, the Foundation will continue this course by prioritizing improvements to mobile-first contributor workflows that help volunteers increase their contributions and understand their impact. We're also making new investments in the experience of readers, helping them engage more deeply and consistently with Wikipedia on both web and the apps. Finally, we will continue current maintenance and upgrades for technical infrastructure, such as MediaWiki core, data center operations, and site reliability engineering services, while strengthening our ability to detect and defend against abuse and targeted attacks against our platform.
To fund these efforts, the Foundation's fundraising team will run its annual English fundraising campaign (for non-logged in users) in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Funds raised from these countries account for more than 50 percent of all funds per year and this is an important campaign to invite readers to support Wikimedia's mission. To prepare for the campaign, the fundraising team will continue the yearly practice of running limited "pre-tests" between July and November, to ensure optimal systems and banners, in collaboration with volunteers, rolling into the usual end of year high-traffic banner campaign.
Collaborating on messaging with volunteer stakeholders is key to the fundraising team. We will start with a message directly adapted from the co-created banner message that ran in December 2024 to kick off the pre-tests and work together with volunteers on new ideas for this year's campaign.
Many ideas shared by volunteers on the English campaign collaboration page last year were incorporated into our fundraising. During the last campaign, we:
began using new headlines such as "The internet we were promised" and "What we're up against"
added an option for donors to make an annual recurring donation. This adds to our pool of dependable recurring income and meets a long-standing donor request
piloted our first test of a Wiki Minute video element in our end of year banners.
continued to use content in the banners to better educate readers as to how Wikipedia works.
launched ACH or electronic bank-to-bank money transfers as a new payment option, in response to requests from donors.
piloted a small thank-you message on Wikipedia with a gentle nudge to try editing. We also ran a call to try editing on the thank you page. In 2024 there were around 3,700 completed registrations to edit.
Based on collaboration on wiki and in person last year, the fundraising team wants to continue co-creating banner messaging and ideas with you. You can participate:
On wiki: Right here on this en.wiki collaboration page, or the fundraising Meta page. The team will share campaign insights, plans, and updates on this collaboration page. Updates will include message ideas for input, summaries on banner testing, changes to messaging over time, and space for new ideas and questions from volunteers. While we won't be able to test every single message idea shared here, we will build from the process in previous years to continue to try ideas shared in this collaboration space as well as other new spaces we're setting up this year.
In person: Members of the fundraising team will attend Wikimania, WikiConference North America, and other movement events for in-person conversations and collaboration.
Live conversations: Virtual conversation spaces for fundraising staff and volunteers to collaborate on fundraising. Is there an existing meeting you'd like us to attend? Please let us know!
Direct individual engagement: If you're interested in connecting directly, please email Julia Brungs at jbrungs at wikimedia dot org.
The first tests of the new fiscal year in July will be testing our current banner design and content against last year's July banner to get a basic Year over Year benchmark. The content will be very similar to last December's messaging but with a few technical and design improvements from international campaigns in Q3 and Q4. And to kick off new messaging, the team welcomes your ideas!
Please share your ideas here! These can be iterations on the message above, new sentences, inspiring words, themes, or new concepts to try. We'd love to use this space to plan out the first message tests of the year together. Thank you for any ideas you'd like to share! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pcoombe (WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:08, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This has literally the same problems as last year, which the community has complained about time and time again. Has this fallen on deaf ears? Once again, I see:
False sense of urgency
Veiled threats to add advertisements
Overly large banner that disrupts the reader experience.
People don't want to donate if you keep shoving things in their faces. It is unappealing, irritating, and makes us look desperate. Why does the WMF not understand this very basic point?
So I of course glumly oppose these banners, since the WMF seems to have ignored all our past discussion about why these banners are misleading and make us look like fools. Some response here would be good to, instead of the community talking into the void and then the WMF proceeding with these anyway. You're fundraising for this website. Please let us pick our own banners.
I don't see a false sense of urgency in this banner, nor a veiled threat to add advertisements. I'm not a fan of the marketing-speak personally, but I've been convinced by prior years' evidence that it is effective. In my view, this is a markedly improved starting point over where we were a few years ago. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:09, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree actually. Maybe I've become mellower in my old age, but I think this is a good banner, and the wording addresses some past complaints ("give what they can" to hopefully stop genuinely hard-up people from overextending themselves, no "keeping Wikipedia online" and so on) – instead it says something positive about how it's a pleasantly quaint, old-fashioned corner of the Internet. So a thumbs-up and a thank you to the team from me. That's without prejudice to the other worthwhile ideas enthusiastically being explored below. AndreasJN46600:27, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here, I'll stop whingeing uselessly and suggest alternatives. I wrote a simpler, shorter message and applied it to the basic look we've been using, making a smaller, more focused banner. My graphic design skills leave something to be desired, but the text is what's important here. Pcoombe (WMF), what do you think of this?
I very much prefer your alternative. Short, concise, to the point. I also wouldn't be opposed to making the banner even thinner (there is still a lot of unnecessary white space). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:54, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A more concise proposalAfter spending a bit too long on this, I made a mockup in HTML, replacing the right side (which took the most height) with a simple "Donate" button, and condensing the many links into a single "FAQ". The gradient (made to be eye-catching and a bit refreshing) is #f2c to #fc2, and should work on both light and dark modes, but can be adjusted if the contrast isn't ideal. The WMF logo serves as a replacement for both the "i" and the WMF wordmark. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I took the wording from @Cremastra, so they might be able to explain this part better than myself. In my mind, it refers to our goal as an encyclopedia, even if some articles aren't perfect. But I agree that this part can be removed if it proves too controversial. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:48, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, "accurate and neutral" is more our goal than the actual state of affairs. By donating, readers are supporting our goal, not just how we're operating today. Cremastra (talk) 17:09, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your wording doesn't make that distinction clear. WMF's banner says "free and collaborative knowledge", which I think is better. Some1 (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like it too, but the colors used in the background still don't seem to contrast very well with the white text. I picked colors around the text and inserted into this tool, with the text set as white, and the bottom text does not pass accessibility (the top colors look OK for large text). ObserveOwl (talk) 17:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Overall, I still prefer the message in the WMF's banner above (though, the message could be shortened a bit); without being distracted by ads or the agendas of wealthy owners is, in my opinion, the most persuasive reason to donate. Some1 (talk) 17:41, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the WMF banner is too lengthy and too large, but overall, the message is, in my view, better than what has been proposed so far. Unfortunately, your proposed message is 1) too generic 2) lacks any compelling reason for readers to donate 3) misleading (re: "accurate, neutral knowledge"). Some1 (talk) 18:03, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The wording of the banner message matters quite a lot actually; according to meta:Fundraising/2022-23 Report: The 2022 banner campaign on the English Wikipedia used lower-performing wording, and therefore required a longer campaign, more banner impressions, and more emails to past donors; it resulted in a $10 million decrease compared to the 2021 campaign.Some1 (talk) 18:14, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The point of these banners should not be to maximise revenues at all cost, it should be to raise the strictly necessary money with the least impact on user experience as possible. The WMF is a nonprofit organization. Ita140188 (talk) 12:41, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, there is a significant gap between someone thinking about donating to a given charity, and actually deciding to do it. A summation of the value of a donation is one good approach to help motivate a potential donor to become an actual donor. isaacl (talk) 22:13, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's prudent for the fundraising team to rely on what it controls itself, rather than on what someone may or may not do. isaacl (talk) 23:00, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
People don't want to donate if you keep shoving things in their faces. Is that actually true, though? I don't think the research bears that out. Graham11 (talk) 05:57, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I wish this waswasn't true, but research and A/B tests conducted over the past few years have convinced me it's not. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:15, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, Graham, I think I agree with you - I wish it wasn't true that "shoving things in people's faces" worked, but it does work from what I've seen. —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:08, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I really like Chaotic Enby's short banner proposal above. It is a refreshing change from the ginormous walls of text we've tended towards in recent years. At the very least I'd like to see the WMF A/B test it against their present banners. The "Current best" banner above is also perfectly acceptable to me – I don't see any obvious falsehoods or even needless exaggerations. Good stuff. I am generally more okay with melodramatic banner text than some of my colleagues, because for better or worse it has been shown to be significantly more effective at attracting donations, but thankfully the "current best" banner doesn't make this tradeoff. Toadspike[Talk]09:00, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unpopular opinion: our focus this year should be being less intrusive to readers, rather than raising as much money as possible. Cremastra (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Though I don't think Chaot's design would be nearly as ineffective, we shouldn't willfully let WMF's community fundraising go down by 95% either. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:09, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that I don't want a 95% drop in fundraising, but that banned kinda sucks ngl. It's white-on-white (doesn't stand out), has tiny text, and what text there is is really bland. I suspect Chaotic Enby's would perform slightly better and would still support an A/B test. Toadspike[Talk]13:32, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
agree with your point but The text is actually bigger than most other banners. See the side-by-side comparison under that section. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:00, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an idea: stop using dark patterns. Cremastra's alternative above is about the largest, longest, and most intrusive any banner should be. James (talk/contribs) 16:18, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WMF-built or Chaotic Enby's banners are good. I fail to see why this needs to be a big community discussion. Let the marketers do their jobs and leave the editing to us. (although I LOVE the "learn how to edit", this needs to be pushed more. Maybe in a separate banner in non-fundraising season but a "editing drive" season where we encourage new people to edit.) --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 22:09, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree an editing drive is a good idea. (It needs to be a big community discussion because in the past the WMF have put forward dishonest banners). Cremastra (talk) 22:17, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have no issues on both the "current best" banner or Chaotic Enby's version. No more fearmongering unlike banners of the past. I am happy to leave the decision to marketing experts at WMF. Catalk to me!16:30, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly expect the WMF banner to do much better than all the alternative proposed banners, and don't find it objectionable in claims or implications. I could nitpick the wording (does donating to the WMF really help keep Wikipedia "up-to-date"? I think that's our job), but there's no drama about how the servers will go down tomorrow if people don't donate or whatever else, and it does highlight the actual things Wikipedia does well. If I was editing it I'd replace "up-to-date" with something we actually use the money for, but otherwise I expect the marketing people to know better than me what works, and don't find "using a big popup" to be a particularly objectionable fundraising technique. I do like the idea of a message encouraging people to learn to edit in addition to/if they can't donate. Rusalkii (talk) 18:09, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The wording is much better than the banners of past years. With that said, I object to any moral panic language, which would include "the agenda of wealthy owners". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸14:48, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WMF's proposed banner looks fine to me, but I agree that the "agenda of wealthy owners" line should be dropped--Wikipedia is run by the wealthy. It's mostly paid for by Google, WMF management are all wealthy people earning six-figure salaries, the founders have monetized the crap out of their roles as founders over the years... Wikipedia serves the agenda of the wealthy just as much as any other media website. Levivich (talk) 18:42, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As cynical as ever... running one of the largest websites in the world isn't free. The WMF pays its top staff a lot, but you know, they do run a large and important nonprofit which has significant tech needs. Jimbo isn't exactly a tech billionaire - as best as I can tell, he has a net worth well south of $10 million, almost none of which comes directly from the WMF or Wikipedia. Who knows what Larry Sanger's worth, but it hardly matters because he hasn't been involved in 20 years. I have my own questions about the WMF's revenues - see my questions about Enterprise on Jimbo's talk page - but this kind of misinformation doesn't achieve anything useful. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:55, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't find "not billionaires,
just mere millionaires" to be a convincing argument. The founders and the people who run the WMF are "wealthy." Millions of dollars of donations are spent on paying wealthy people hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to run the WMF. Yes, it's a fact of life, but it means we shouldn't suggest that Wikipedia doesn't serve the wealthy, because it does. It's not a populist or a communist thing. Levivich (talk) 19:13, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your key word there is "serve" - Wikipedia's supporting non-profit foundation is managed by people who are paid salaries which make them wealthy, but that doesn't remotely mean that Wikipedia (the encyclopedia) serves the wealthy. The WMF does not write our encyclopedia, ever. Nor do they interfere with content - with rare exception for legal exigencies. So how does our encyclopedia (as opposed to the WMF) "serve the agenda of the wealthy"? —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:19, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, by raising donations that, in part, go to wealthy people. Wikipedia is written by volunteers, but it's run by wealthy people (the WMF executives).
More important than executive salaries, Wikipedia also serves the agenda of the wealthy by creating free content that is used by rich tech companies (and the billionaires who run them) to make money, like Google and OpenAI. Wikipedia makes Sam Altman and Sergey Brin richer. Google didnt donate millions to the WMF out of the goodness of its heart: it did so because Wikipedia makes Google money. Levivich (talk) 19:25, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"agenda of wealthy owners" is an unpersuasive point and unnecessarily demonizes success. Nix it. It's also highly political. Buffs (talk) 20:38, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The team has been busy testing this month, including many suggestions made on this page. Here are some results:
1. As requested by @Kevinl, we tested the headline, Wikipedia was once a dream, against our current control, Wikipedia was just a dream, and saw a significant loss in donation rate in both Mobile large (-14%) and Desktop large banners (-17%), demonstrating how hard it is to get a performative headline in place. We are open to other, similar iterations if you have them.
2. We tested @Ganesha811's request for a single paragraph, "Wikipedia is written by humans, for humans. Unlike AI chatbots, it's not controlled by a big corporation or wealthy billionaire. Anyone can contribute, even you. If you value free knowledge, support Wikipedia today," banner against our Mobile Large banner and saw a significant 35% decrease in donations per impression and a significant 18% decrease in new donors (Diff).
3. Lastly, we tested a few variants in our large Desktop banner re-integrating some of @Ganesha811's winning copy that we had adopted earlier this summer. This particular variant was adopted into Desktop Large banner, "Wikipedia's been around since 2001. Back then, it was just a wildly ambitious, probably impossible dream. But it came together piece by piece–created by people, not machines. Wikipedia's not perfect, but it's always been free thanks to everyday readers." (bolded text is from Ganesha811's original copy, Diff).
While our full traffic campaign begins on December 1, there is still time to share your ideas and suggestions. Thank you for offering your feedback so far.
Thanks for running the test! That sounds like about what I'd expect - it's just less noticeable when it's that much shorter. How do you decide which "face" to attribute the banners to? And apologies if you've already mentioned this, but what's this year's fundraising goal for the December campaign? —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:33, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone, thanks for the discussion and creativity above, it’s great to see familiar names and new contributors too. As mentioned already, we tested a simple banner last year in response to similar feedback and it did not perform particularly well. Perhaps a natural next step is to test a version of our control banner with shorter text. This comes with tradeoffs as we necessarily leave out content readers tell us they find valuable but we are working towards having a good experience. We could conduct this test in the coming weeks.
Looking forward to collaborating further with you. Best, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"We might run ads if you don't donate!!" I was at a public computer and the best way to get a photo was with my phone. Sorry.While at a public computer and logged out of Wikipedia, I got a small banner (cool to see that this is being tried!). But I got one of the "we might resort to ads or a paywall if you don't donate" ones. Seriously? I thought we collectively decided to not do that? I absolutely understand that banners are a necessary part of ensuring Wikipedia's continued existence. But spreading FUD is not in accordance with our values as a place where you can spread accurate knowledge. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they)23:56, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Disappointing, given that that banner wasn't shown here and we've made it clear in the past that we don't like the WMF threatening our readers. Does SPuri-WMF want to comment? Cremastra (talk) 23:59, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, if WMF chooses a color that isn't red and changes "helps" to "would help", I wouldn't see any connotation of "these things will happen if you don't donate", but rather "you would join the group that prevents these things from happening". The latter lacks the former meaning. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:26, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @HouseBlaster, I'm glad to hear you liked the smaller banner format. Regarding the message — the intent isn’t to sound threatening, but rather to highlight that Wikipedia is free of advertising or paywalls. Over the years, many donors have shared that they deeply value the fact that Wikipedia has no paywall or ads, which is why we emphasize that point here. That said, I’d love to hear any messaging ideas you might have for the smaller banner. There may be something our content team can explore in testing. Best, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SPuri-WMF There's a proposal below by @Ganesha811 that multiple editors prefer. I suggest using proposals suggested on this page that multiple community members have already endorsed. Soni (talk) 18:13, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Soni. We have seen those great suggestions and are working to get them into tests. We very recently started testing for this year so have not got to them just yet. Stay tuned for a report back on this. Thanks, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At minimum, the official Wikipedia apps collect your reading history to give you suggestions. Not that they sell it, but still, plus one could argue editing history and checkuser data is collected. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:23, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should lean into emphasizing how Wikipedia is different than what's out there today. Recent controversies notwithstanding, Wikipedia is a bastion for human-sourced, manually created information. This is something that many people find valuable (see this tweet with 605k likes)! I'd like to see language along these lines:Wikipedia is written by people, not by machines. It's not perfect, but it's not here to push a point of view. It's owned by a non-profit, not a giant technology company or a billionaire. If you value free information, support Wikipedia today. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:14, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are machines "here to push a point of view" though? Besides that bit, I like the idea of emphasizing that Wikipedia is written by people. Some1 (talk) 13:31, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another variant with a slightly more populist bent: Wikipedia is written by people, for people. Unlike AI chatbots, it's not controlled by a big corporation or wealthy billionaire. Anyone can contribute, even you. If you value free knowledge, support Wikipedia today. —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:11, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I very much like this one too! Regarding my earlier banner proposal, I'm not married to the text it uses, and something like this on the same design could be much more impactful. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:16, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would like something that mentions user contributions. So many people are (still) not aware of the volunteer nature of the project. The rest of it is also pertinent. Dege31 (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is misleading. Wikipedia wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the millions of dollars and other support from Google and other tech companies and wealthy benefactors. Large language models wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Wikipedia deciding to make its content free to reuse for any purpose including commercial purposes. Portraying Wikipedia as some kind of antidote or counterbalance to big tech is misleading: the relationship between Wikipedia and rich tech companies is symbiotic, not oppositional. Even Jimbo has cashed in--remember when he sold an NFT of the first edit for like a quarter of a million dollars? Don't kid yourself into thinking Wikipedia is a populist thing. It exists because tech bros (starting with Larry and Jimbo) correctly identified the value of having free labor create content. Levivich (talk) 18:53, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Extended discussion on Wikipedia and big tech
I don't see any reason Wikipedia and big tech can't be both symbiotic and oppositional. Yes, they have depended on Wikipedia's data in the past, and we've depended on their search engines and web traffic. But many things about us - our governance model, our content model, our willingness to delete data, our commitment to copyright freedom - stand in direct opposition to them. And this statement Wikipedia wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the millions of dollars and other support from Google and other tech companies and wealthy benefactors is a very bold claim with very little evidence to support it. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:58, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, one reason why something can't be both symbiotic and oppositional is that those words are antonyms. One means they work together and the other means they work against each other.
Wikipedia does not work against big tech in any way; it works for big tech. Our governing model is not oppositional to big tech--we use the same US non-profit corporate model as OpenAI, with a board of directors, a C-Suite, we pay taxes, etc. etc., just like any other non-profit. Our content model is not oppositional to Google, it supports Google. We give our content to Google. We even sell high volume/high speed access to our content to Google now. Google makes money off our content. Same with our "commitment to copyright freedom"--that's what let's Google and OpenAI and all the others make money off of our content. That's not oppositional, it's supportive. And "our willingness to delete data"--what? I don't even know what that refers to, but FYI what we call "deletion" on Wikipedia isn't actually deletion, it's just making it so non-admins can't view it. Wikipedia deletes almost nothing: not pages, not user accounts. Like I said: don't kid yourself into thinking that we are somehow separate from, or an antidote to, tech companies. We are a tech company, we are a media company, we are part of that ecosystem. Levivich (talk) 19:07, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think our mental models are complex enough to understand a complex relationship in which some aspects are supportive and others are oppositional. Your broader points about how Wikipedia fits into the tech world are interesting and worthy of discussion - but though covering the similarities, you ignore all of the vast differences between Wikipedia and the rest of the tech and media landscape. What I mean by deletion is this - the rest of the tech world makes money by gathering and generating vast reams of data from users, and then selling it to advertisers. Because they are so dependent on data, they are loathe to delete things that are bad, or moderate their content. We are the opposite - our purpose is to generate a single article on each topic, not an endless array of posts and videos and ads on each topic. Therefore our users are very willing to remove, delete, or pull from view content which is bad, and "moderation" (i.e. editing) is our basic mode of being.
Lots of people make money off of our content (and actually on Enterprise I think we may mostly agree, again see my comments to Jimbo on his talk recently). But that doesn't mean we serve the agendas of the wealthy - copyright freedom means we serve everyone. One day, OpenAI will run out of VC money and start selling ads to support themselves. But we both know that Wikipedia never will (and the WMF will never ask us to) because it would mean the collapse of the project and the end of Wikipedia. —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:26, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree there is lots of nuance and complexity in the relationship between Wikipedia and big tech. Although I still don't think anything Wikipedia does is "oppositional" to big tech: nothing Wikipedia does is bad for Google or other tech companies; it's all to their benefit, not their detriment.
A fundraising message that highlights that Wikipedia does not collect or sell user data would be a great addition--this is one area where Wikipedia is "pure" (along with no ads).
But I think the fundraising ads need to be squeaky-clean: so just as the ads shouldn't suggest or imply that Wikipedia will be shut down if it doesn't receive more donations, it shouldn't suggest or imply that donating to Wikipedia is independent of, or an alternative to, or stands in opposition to, big tech or the wealthy. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Elon Musk...all of them and more have donated millions and millions of dollars to Wikipedia over the years. (That's where most of the Wikipedia Endowment money came from.) And all of those big tech donors have in turn used Wikipedia's free content to make money. In many ways, a donation to Wikipedia is a donation to OpenAI, or a donation to Google, because those companies use Wikipedia as part of the product they sell. Any fundraising message that says something like "unlike [our major donors]..." or "Wikipedia does not serve [our major donors who use our content as part of the products they sell]..." is a non-starter for me. It's dishonest, IMO, to say or suggest that Wikipedia does not support, or is not supported by, big tech or the wealthy. Wikipedia is hand-in-glove with tech bros. It's the "deal with the devil" that made "the last great place on the internet" possible. (Ironically, the same deal with the devil accelerated the development of LLMs, which likely will lead to the end of Wikipedia as we know it. Karma.) Levivich (talk) 20:12, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To return to the specific topic of fundraising banners, my revision stated that unlike AI chatbots, it's not controlled by a big corporation or wealthy billionaire - which is just literally true. A fundraising message that highlights that Wikipedia does not collect or sell user data would be a great addition--this is one area where Wikipedia is "pure" (along with no ads). Agreed and I'd be interested to see what the WMF could propose along these lines.
As to the rest of your point, I think it's ridiculous to say that a cash donation to the WMF is a donation to OpenAI or Google. Your logic more meaningfully implies that an edit to Wikipedia is a donation to those tech companies - including our edits in this very discussion. The written words are what they take from us, along with the rest of the world. But again, outsiders making money off of Wikipedia is an inevitable side effect of it existing. It doesn't change what we do here. It's just a consequence of free culture. —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:21, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh it's not inevitable at all. It's a very deliberate, very specific choice we (the volunteer community) have made: to license Wikipedia as CC-BY-SA instead of CC-BY-SA-NC. If we chose to use the NC (non-commercial) license, then tech companies couldn't use our content for commercial purposes. They can only do this because we don't adopt the NC license.
A more honest or accurate version would be "unlike AI chatbots, it's not controlled by a big corporation or wealthy billionaire, although big corporations and wealthy billionaires have donated millions of dollars to Wikipedia, and when you donate to Wikipedia, it will help generate content that will be used by big corporations and wealthy billionaires to train AI chatbots among other things, because we choose to allow them to do this." You see what I mean about why I think it's not entirely honest to suggest that a donation to Wikipedia doesn't help AI chatbots or big corporations? Levivich (talk) 20:29, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all,
Thank you for these great suggestions! Our content team will take a look at them and we will bring back suggestions to you of how they could be used in our banners. Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, @Ganesha811, for your thoughtful suggestions. We recently tested a banner inspired by your message in both desktop and mobile large formats. On desktop, we saw a 9% improvement in performance! You can see the diff here.
When we see promising results like this, we adopt them and then keep testing — refining the language, improving performance, and adapting to other changes in the experience. We’re looking forward to further developing this text and incorporating ideas from across the team to make it even more impactful.
Interesting to hear! I'm glad you guys are iterating. Have you tested versions with and without the first and third paragraphs, to see what impact they have? —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:25, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, @Ganesha811. We haven’t tested your specific copy without the first and third paragraphs, but we’ve extensively tested overall message length and flow over the years. As one example, we tried removing the middle paragraph last year and saw a significant decline in donation rate (-8%, diff if you'd like to take a look). Our experience shows that removing either the first and third paragraph would result in an even larger loss, because we have highly optimized the opening and closing lines as those elements get the most attention. We will continue working with this text over the next few weeks and will share any further testing results here. Thank you.
Just curious – is the donation rate the only metric that was tested for, or were metrics like the bounce rate or the pages per session also evaluated? It might be that more people click on the donation link as it is more prominent, but that, conversely, less people end up staying on the site. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:23, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ChaoticEnby, getting back to your question from earlier, we do not directly track bounce rate or pages per session, but it's an interesting point. We do know that the number of readers who choose to donate drops off after seeing a banner four or five times. Therefore, we've worked to reduce the number of banners shown to hopefully avoid greatly interfering with someone's experience on Wikipedia.Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 08:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SPuri-WMF Thanks for the reply! That change is a good thing, as reader experience is also an essential aspect to consider, and too many donation banners might be counter-productive. I am still curious about the feasibility of tracking additional metrics, would there be any technical hurdles to doing so? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:05, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Chaotic Enby, thanks for following up and forgive my delay, I was traveling for work when you sent your message.
Because of the limited data we collect on our fundraising impressions, we don’t normally have access to deeper pageview data. But I’ve started some internal discussions to see if we can use the xLabs testing platform to run a controlled test, comparing pageview metrics when banners are live vs. not.
I’ll post again when I’ve got useful insight. Thanks for the suggestion.
I'd appreciate if you tested this copy without the first and third paragraphs, since this is the season of experimentation! I'd be curious to see the results. Chaotic Enby's question is also worthwhile. Thanks! —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:09, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ganesha811, while not a complete deletion of the first and third paragraphs, we've recently tested hiding two paragraphs from our banner unless a reader clicked a button labeled "Tell me more", which would expand the banner. The idea being that we would show the full banner content to those readers interested enough to click the button. This test was a significant loss, which we interpret as the entire fundraising message being important to the decision to donate.Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 08:31, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SPuri-WMF, your interpretation is interesting, but is there a reason you can't try testing precisely what I suggested? What you describe is a very different experience for the reader and I'm not surprised it led to a fall-off in donations. Please give my proposal a shot as written —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:24, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Ganesha811, we can test removing the first and last paragraph, leaving only the middle paragraph and let you know how that performs. Since our last update, we have been working towards aligning some of the content with the upcoming birthday. This is part of a bigger strategy and we prefer to keep this in. Thanks, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I think the only thing to add back in would be If you value free knowledge, support Wikipedia today which was in the original copy I mentioned but not the prior version you shared; I do think we need an explicit request for support or a donation as I'm sure you'd agree. —Ganesha811 (talk) 17:07, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In other words, it would be great to see a test of precisely this proposal, nothing more, nothing less: Wikipedia is written by humans, for for humans. Unlike AI chatbots, it's not controlled by a big corporation or wealthy billionaire. Anyone can contribute, even you. If you value free knowledge, support Wikipedia today. I'm very curious how this message would stack up against others you are testing. Thanks for iterating with us! —Ganesha811 (talk) 17:11, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Ganesha811, thank you for your patience. We have not tested this yet, but it is in the queue for November. We're estimating we'll have room to test it before the US Thanksgiving holiday. I will update you afterwards with the results. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@KMorrow-WMF I'd also appreciate seeing a test with a version that explicitly contrasts Wikipedia with AI, as I had written. It'd also be interesting to see what impact the "header" (currently You deserve an explanation) has - I'd suggest Written by people, for people. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:12, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ganesha811, while we haven't directly tested the direct contrast line, the sentiment of it aligns very closely with messaging tested for the WP25 campaign and is very similar to lines that have been tested. "Crafted for humans, by humans", has been adopted into our banner content of the campaign. We've very recently tested the headline, "Created for humans, by humans" which unfortunately was a significant loss, as well as a few headlines that have the same spirit including: "Knowledge is human" and "Knowledge needs humans". Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 08:31, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Cremastra Just a quick follow up, we tested replacing 'crafted' with 'written' and were able to adopt this last week. Our two instances of 'crafted' have been replaced by 'written'. Thank you, KMorrow-WMF (talk) 15:24, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"WE'RE DOING OKAY! Wikipedia takes a lot of money to run, but thanks to people like you, we actually have enough money that we don't need to ask for further donations at this time! We're a non-profit, so we will eventually need more donations to help preserve our independence. And we'll never reject anyone's generosity. But for now, don't feel obligated!"
I think the honesty in a message like that might actually get more donations. (Clearly it wouldn't be something to run every year, but.) DS (talk) 13:31, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like these kinds of unconventional approaches. I'm wondering if it could actually be optimal to use this year's donation season to A/B test many different ideas? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:40, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm mixed on this. I think "We're doing okay" could be great headline, but the WMF does need community donations every year to keep up its current pace of maintenance. For example new data centers from last year and from 2022 prevented the pope announcement from overloading the servers. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
...and then next year, we run a banner that says "WE'RE NOT DOING OKAY ANYMORE! We didn't seriously fundraiser last year, so we had to raid our cash reserves to make up for the shortfall, and if we have to do it again this year, we'll be in big trouble and have to do mass layoffs, so please donate this year even though we said we didn't need your money last year." :-) Levivich (talk) 18:38, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, when you look up "ウィキペディア" and look at what comes after that on Google search's suggests, some of those are donation banner-related. You know at least something is WRONG with the current approach (I mean, I do think the current banners are creepy rather than convincing) when stuff like "寄付 怪しい" (donation suspicious) comes right after them on suggests. I'd really be interested in seeing Wikipedia taking a completely different approach to see how that'd turn out. AlphaBetaGamma (Talk/report any mistakes here) 15:20, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note... Although these websites are not in English, it's worth a read as they give some interesting comments about Wikipedia's fundraising mails and stuff. Fun read imo. (No, I am not related to whatever this website is in any way. Just saying that out loud before someone complains about this.) [5][6][7]AlphaBetaGamma (Talk/report any mistakes here) 15:29, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's much representative of realities. If I start typing "jetbrains donations", Google suggests "... to israel", when there is absolutely nothing about JetBrains donating to Israel. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:44, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We are starting our third month of “pre-testing” before the English fundraising campaign kicks off to 100% of non-logged in readers and I wanted to give you an update on what we have been doing, where we are going, and what is new.
What we tested
During the first two months of our testing we focused on carefully calibrating and checking the performance of different design elements in preparation for new ideas in these spaces. With a deeper understanding of how each piece of our banner impacts our end result, we can begin thinking of ways to improve them and make the donation process as frictionless as possible.
Additionally, we tested some suggestions made above, and you can find the results there.
What is coming up:
As we near the December English fundraising campaign, these next few months will focus on further optimization and trying new design ideas to ensure our donation process is as frictionless as possible. On a more creative side, we'll test design elements that align with the upcoming 25th birthday campaign to ensure our fundraising banners have the same spirit as messaging seen elsewhere, either on Wikipedia or around the web.
Wikipedia’s 25th birthday 🎂
We will incorporate the upcoming 25th birthday of Wikipedia into our fundraising. Our goal is to align with the broader communications campaign while ensuring banners highlight what resonates most with readers: the personal benefit of having Wikipedia by their side for 25 years. By weaving birthday messaging into our fundraising appeals, we aim to reinforce the shared celebration, strengthen the sense of human collaboration behind Wikipedia, and inspire readers to sustain the project for its next 25 years.
Everything else
What else has been going on in fundraising? There are a few things I want to share with you.
As in the previous financial year, we are running some fundraising experiments on Wikipedia outside of banners. For example, we are experimenting with adding a small heart icon to the donate link on desktop. We’ll be running fundraising experiments on desktop Wikipedia, mobile Wikipedia and the Wikipedia App throughout Q2.
We published a summary of our Content Guidelines to meta last financial year and I just wanted to mention this here in case people did not notice but are interested to have a look.
We also had a community discussion about expanding our testing season on English Wikipedia to run the whole year. This was announced on the VPWMF and the subsequent discussion is on meta. If you missed it and have some comments, questions, or feedback, please leave them on the meta discussion page.
I am looking forward to engaging with you all further and I will share more about our testing progress later in the quarter.
From the responses above, it seems the only relevant metric used to judge the quality of a fundraising banner is how much money it can generate. However, this should be weighted over how intrusive and misleading the message and banner are. Bigger banners may lead to more donations, but also lead to worse experience for readers. Misleading messages like in previous years (in the style of "Wikipedia urgently needs your help!") also may lead to more donations in the short term, but also reputational damage and loss of credibility in the long term. How are you planning to test these effects? Ita140188 (talk) 09:45, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ita140188From the responses above, it seems the only relevant metric used to judge the quality of a fundraising banner is how much money it can generate. Yep. The WMF doesn't give a fig for anything else. If you make suggestions otherwise, they'll ignore you, then return two months later with what they've always wanted to do. (Very selective hearing.) It is impossible for the community to control what the WMF will do because they don't listen to us and don't care about our opinion. The community and the encyclopedia are nice little asides: the main goal is for the Foundation to continue to exist and take in money. Cremastra (talk·contribs) 12:39, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ganesha811, with regards to sharing all banners that we are planning to test, this is rather hard for us. We test a lot of different variations (some are very small) of banners throughout a test and it would not be possible for us to share them all here. We also often do not finalise tests until shortly before a test runs, since we leverage the learnings of the tests prior.
Going into our next testing series, we are focusing on some design elements and testing more ideas around the upcoming birthday campaign that explains the impact of Wikipedia over the last 25 years. So far, we have seen good performance with the headline “Wikipedia was just a dream” which is contextualized with the sentence “25 years ago Wikipedia was a dream. A wildly ambitious, probably impossible dream. A dream that came together piece by piece. Now, 65 million articles. 260,000 volunteers across the entire world. Here's to 25 years of knowledge, humanity, and collaboration at its best.”
We are still experimenting with this type of messaging and are curious on any approaches that appeal to you in relation to leveraging the upcoming birthday as a moment to explain the important role of Wikipedia in the world. Thanks, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of a birthday message, and it's good to celebrate Wikipedia as a monumental success (because it is!). Rather than sharing those that you are planning to test, would the team be able to share a list of those which have been tested? Presumably the team keeps track of this. That would be helpful. Thanks. —Ganesha811 (talk) 17:05, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Ganesha811, I checked back with the team and we tried to find ways to share all past banner tests here but it is simply too much work for us to do this in a meaningful way, especially during our busiest season. Many of these tests live across multiple internal files and documentation, which makes compiling them even more difficult. I am very sorry. We will continue to regularly share test results here and invite discussions and suggestions. Thank you for understanding. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SPuri-WMF: Apologies for reviving an old thread. A non-Wikipedian friend flagged the "Wikipedia was just a dream" title as quite unclear/confusing, telling me: I get what tone they're going for, but initially I got the sadder implicature. While I understand the desire, I wonder if you could add to the list of community feedback that you keep internally somewhere that adding the word "once" could help a lot, i.e., "Wikipedia was once just a dream". Just a suggestion, with thanks! Best, KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 16:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for sharing this feedback. “Just a dream” is part of the WP25 campaign, and one of our key goals this year is to improve alignment between internal departments and ensure that all outward-facing communications — including fundraising banners — tie into the same creative concept (and this year, that is the 25th birthday of Wikipedia).
That said, we understand the concern around tone and initial interpretation. Within the banner, the phrase is contextualized in the middle paragraph, which aims to make the meaning clear and uplifting. Still, the suggestion to explore wording like “once just a dream” is a great one, and we’ll keep that in mind as we continue testing and refining copy variations. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We also hosted a session at Wikimania to gather volunteer feedback! More to come on this soon. We will also be hosting a session at Wikicon NA in New York in October.
After laying out our fundraising testing work, we got right to it and worked with the attendees on our banner messages. We got many great theme suggestions to test in our banners. Here are a few we would appreciate your thoughts on:
Wikipedia empowers communities: Writing and editing Wikipedia is a skill-building activity for many communities - ‘hidden benefit’
Subscribe to something that matters: people are willing to subscribe to other services. Wikipedia will not be a subscription model but would the comparison motivate donors?
Could we feature more volunteer stories on the TY page?
Subscribe to something that matters: people are willing to subscribe to other services. Wikipedia will not be a subscription model but would the comparison motivate donors? No. Thin end of the wedge, my friend. Cremastra (talk·contribs) 15:44, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I second this - this runs an unnecessarily high risk of making people think they will have to pay or should pay to access Wikipedia. I do like the idea of Wikipedia as empowering communities and bringing to light "hidden" stories and facts. —Ganesha811 (talk) 15:47, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the "subscribe to" concept could be an appropriate for a banner that encourages recurring donations.
People subscribe to all sorts of things, including things that don't cost them anything (e.g., free newsletters). I don't think people will automatically think that they need to pay for access. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Saying "subscribe to" while you're asking people for money absolutely implies that if you don't pay, you won't get access. It's not worth the risk to Wikipedia's reputation. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:28, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding this. Wikipedia is not a subscription model, not even a free one. Whether paid or free, subscriptions imply that you gain something from subscribing, which isn't the case here (as it is a purely voluntary recurring donation). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 08:57, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all for your thoughts. While this suggestion came from volunteers at Wikimania, I'm hearing that some of you do not support this idea. I want to quickly expand, for clarification, what attendees of our session at Wikimania suggested. The suggestion was not for us to adopt a subscription model for Wikipedia, but rather to highlight in our banner language that people don’t think twice about paying a subscription fee for an online service they rely upon or use regularly (e.g. ChatGPT) but do not realise that Wikipedia is (and will remain) free but relies on donations.
For now, we will not test specific ideas around ‘subscription’ but we might revisit this idea in the future, noting this support. If we explore this idea further, we will consult with both the online community here, as well as the community at conferences (specifically Wikimania and WikConNA if possible).
As Cremastra said, I understood the proposal clearly. It's still a bad idea, as previously stated. We should not lead people to associate Wikipedia with paying a fee for a subscription, nor should we run the risk of making people think they might have to pay to access Wikipedia. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:16, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As above, as Wikipedia is not a subscription service (and never will be) we should not associate it to one by using "subscription" or hinting at it. The long term reputation and credibility of Wikipedia is at least as important as the donations. If we give up on our reputation and credibility, we may get some more money this year, but the long-term survival of the project is at risk Ita140188 (talk) 13:24, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to follow up on our previous updates above. You are all used to seeing our fundraising report published in late October. This year, we are moving the publication of the report to Q3 (January - March 2026) and will publish it in Q3 going forward. To give you a sneak peak, here are some high level results from FY24/25 that we will expand on in the upcoming fundraising report. Please note, these numbers are approximate and have not been through a final reconciliation just yet so you might see some differences when the report gets published in Q3.
Donation totals by sources for FY24/25:
During the financial year we raised over 184 million USD from over 18 million donations. If we look at these by channel we see that the largest part comes from banners (19% mobile banners and 15% desktop banners), next we have 23% from recurring donations, 17% from email, 12% from major gifts, 7% from Chapter gifts, and ‘others’ is at 8%.
Additionally, our fundraising revenue increased by over 8% in FY2425, and the average gift was around $10 USD.
As I said, more details and final numbers will be in the fundraising report in Q3 with more detail around what drove these trends.
Thanks a lot! Just curious, what motivates the change in the publication schedule? Is it exclusively the reconciliation process, or have there been other unforeseen issues with the current calendar? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:51, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We are making this change as Q1 and Q2 (July - December) is a really busy time for the team with the English banner fundraising campaign going on. Additionally, publishing it in later Q3 aligns this report with other official reports of the Foundation that are being published during Q3 and Q4 (e.g. the annual report, the Form 990). Thanks, Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Starting in November, the online fundraising team will begin displaying non-appeal banners uniquely for donors. We identify these donors through the active donation cookie in their web browser which they will have received after they made a donation and visited the Thank You page. The goal with these banners is to drive deeper engagement with our donors, and provide both stewardship and additional ways to support Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the global free knowledge movement.
Our basic banner design is purely affirmational, focused on gratitude for active donors:
I generally like the idea of showing gratitude to our donors - nice thought. I'd recommend being careful to avoid giving the impression that the goal is to get more of their money. For instance, a slight tweak to the basic copy above might read: "Wikipedia is thriving due to generous donors like you. Thank you for your support", which emphasizes the "thank you" more directly. In other words, definitely keep them "non-appeal." Very simple messages like "You donated to Wikipedia! We deeply appreciate it" or "Your donation to Wikipedia is helping support free knowledge worldwide" might also work. My other suggestion would be to put together some "donor banners" that suggest that they begin editing, if they don't have an account. Something like "We are grateful that you donated to Wikipedia. Anyone can edit Wikipedia - give it a try!" with a link to Help:Introduction or some of the beginner copyediting task tools. —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:57, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My other suggestion would be to put together some "donor banners" that suggest that they begin editing, if they don't have an account. Something like "We are grateful that you donated to Wikipedia. Anyone can edit Wikipedia - give it a try!" with a link to Help:Introduction or some of the beginner copyediting task tools. Yes, this is a very good idea. We need new editors more than we need money. Cremastra (talk·contribs) 20:36, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your input here, @Ganesha811 and @Cremastra. The messaging suggestions above ( "You donated to Wikipedia! We deeply appreciate it" or "Your donation to Wikipedia is helping support free knowledge worldwide" ) sound great and we will work on implementing those.
Regarding the idea of inviting donors to edit, we appreciate the suggestion and the spirit behind it. We coordinate closely with our colleagues in Product & Technology to explore ways of encouraging editing, and we continue to include a prominent invitation to edit on our donor Thank You page as an action.
Past testing has shown that only a very small percentage of donors respond to direct editing calls-to-action. We are exploring how to build a gentler, more natural journey, one that introduces editing or other ways to engage more actively with Wikipedia in a more digestible way. More to come in this space. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi All,
I’m here to share plans for a variant of the above non-appeal banner for donors. This will be a “badge” that appears on Wikipedia. We would invite people to opt-in for the badge after they have donated. This badge utilizes the same cookie we depend on to hide future fundraising appeals for current donors. The goal of this badge (which we would enable for a pilot phase running through January 30, 2026), is to have an ongoing way to show gratitude to donors directly on Wikipedia.
In phase 1, we’ll be evaluating sentiment and reactions to the badge, but we envision using it just like the donor banner: to prime donors to take additional actions that benefit the Wikimedia movement.
We are still drafting concepts for the badge, and they still need to go through rounds of internal review. With that caveat, I can share our very rough starting direction for what the badge could notionally look like:
Just to clarify, this badge would be available only to people who made a donation. The badge is enabled by a cookie stored locally on the reader’s own web browser, and only visible to them when visiting Wikipedia.org. (Redacted) 21:58, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
Apologies, I just wanted to confirm the above post was from me.
Hi everyone, the leaves are falling here in North Carolina, which means the end-of-year campaign is right around the corner. Thank you to everyone who has been sharing feedback on our banners over the last months. We value this collaboration and know how invested everyone is in our fundraising content. We have been focused a lot in the last month on a few priorities around monthly giving and the birthday but now this is done we are turning our attention back to more community suggestions in the weeks ahead. Please share your thoughts and ideas with us!
Here’s a look at some of the tests we’ve been running recently, and what we’re planning next.
This year, we’ve spent more time testing and refining our Wikipedia 25th messaging, with strong results. We’ve created a more unified story across our banners, focusing on Wikipedia’s growth and impact over the last 25 years. We’ve also aligned our banner designs with the “puzzle piece” look that’s part of the broader birthday celebration from the Communications team and this will be released in the next couple of weeks.
Here’s a sneak peek at that design:
Here’s a snapshot of how our messaging has evolved:
Earlier version: A short, direct message asking readers to give because they use and value Wikipedia.
Current version: A richer story about how Wikipedia started as a bold dream and became a global, volunteer-powered resource. It connects giving to the next generation of knowledge-sharing.
Beginning of September
Please don't skip this 1-minute read. It's Wednesday, October 29, and we're running a short fundraiser to support Wikipedia. If you've lost count of how many times you've visited Wikipedia this year, we hope that means it's given you at least $2.75 of knowledge. Please join the 2% of readers who give what they can to keep this valuable resource ad-free and available for all.
25 years ago Wikipedia was a dream. A wildly ambitious, probably impossible dream. A dream that came together piece by piece. Now, 65 million articles. 260,000 volunteers across the entire world. Here's to 25 years of knowledge, humanity, and collaboration at its best.
Most readers donate because Wikipedia is useful to them, others because they realize knowledge needs humans. If you feel the same, please donate $2.75 now—or consider a monthly gift to help all year. Thank you.
Current Control
Please don't skip this 1-minute read. It's Wednesday, October 29, and if you're like us, you've used Wikipedia countless times. To settle an argument with a friend. To satisfy a curiosity. Whether it's 3 in the morning or the afternoon, Wikipedia is useful in your life. Please give $2.75.
Wikipedia's been around since 2001. Back then, it was just a wildly ambitious, probably impossible dream. But it came together piece by piece. For all that time, Wikipedia's stayed free. We do not run ads—we rely on the support of everyday readers.
Only 2% ever donate. But that small group makes a big difference. When you support Wikipedia, you're standing up for something simple but profound: that knowledge should belong to everyone.
If you agree, then this is your moment to give back. Even $2.75 makes a difference. Help keep it going—for you, for the next reader, and for the next generation.
Starting on November 10, we'll have some more messaging on the birthday to help raise awareness and gear audiences up for the celebration in January. This will include themed banners shown above, social media posts and video. We hope this will help readers start to reflect and understand the profound impact Wikipedia has had on the internet in that time.
Encouraging monthly or annual giving
Our fundraising model has always focused on inviting as many readers as possible to give, even small amounts like $2.75. That broad base of support has been key to our success.
As important as it remains to give people flexible options that work for them, recurring revenue is the most reliable type of giving and allows us to do the best long term planning with our limited resources. To build more stability, we’re testing ways to encourage more monthly or annual recurring donations.
Some of our tests include:
Small design touches that draw attention to the “make it monthly” option:
New layouts that make monthly giving the default choice. This is a small test and we are tracking to see if it results in a spike of unintended monthly sign-ups or we get other feedback from readers:
Control form
Monthly-oriented form
When we emphasize recurring, we usually see fewer total donations, but monthly donors tend to give about three times as much over a year as one-time donors. We’ll remain focused on the balance of bringing in new donors with building more reliable, long-term support.
Do fundraising banners impact the reading experience?
We’re planning a new test, thanks to an idea from @ChaoticEnby, to measure how banners might affect reading behavior, things like bounce rate and articles per session.
We’ll compare pageviews for readers who see banners versus those who don’t.
Our goal is to keep improving how much we raise per impression while protecting the reading experience.
“Abandoned cart” banners
We’ve seen great results from “Remind Me Later” options via email and text, indicating that some readers have an appetite to give, but the timing wasn’t right.
And we know drop-off happens even once people begin the giving process, because we’ve seen statistically significant wins adding nudges several steps into the checkout flow.
Our “abandoned cart” concept is a new way to follow-up with these potential donors. Using first-party cookies, we’ll try showing special banners to readers who started but didn’t complete their donation. The idea is to gently remind them to finish, instead of just showing them another generic banner hopefully reducing the amount of banners we show overall.
We’ll see if this approach helps more readers follow through when they’re ready.
Content testing
Let us know your feedback on the banners so far. We have more content testing to come and some previous elements, including some ideas suggested in this page can be explored further.
Thank you again for all your thoughtful feedback and partnership. Every insight helps us make Wikipedia’s fundraising more effective and more aligned with our mission of keeping knowledge free and accessible for everyone. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SPatton (WMF) When I see banners here in Canada, they tell me that all that's needed is for everyone to donate just $2.75 (Canadian dollars, I assume). Now, in the above screenshots, the suggested amount – presumably for a UK reader – is £2.75. Which is odd, because the CAD to pound sterling exchange rate is not 1:1. Indeed, if all that was needed was for everyone to donate $2.75 CAD monthly, you should be asking UK readers for just £1.50, another attractively round number.
I do hope this is my own brain being confused, or a temporary display issue on the tests shown. Because otherwise it looks as if the WMF is toying with the numbers a little. Cremastra (talk·contribs) 18:41, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct that in our current banners, we are using the same 2.75 ‘anchor’ for a variety of our English Campaign countries. It is easier for us to maintain the code that way. And we sometimes test other amounts, particularly with how much currency valuations have changed.
We do hold ourselves accountable to featuring a number here that is accurate, in that if everyone seeing our banners did give 2.75 of their currency, we’d surpass our campaign target. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SPatton (WMF) Thank you for the clarification. If it's not too much trouble, may I ask what number (rounded to, say, the hundrenths place) would be needed for everyone to donate in their own currency to meet but not surpass your fundraising target? Cremastra (talk·contribs) 15:14, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We will put together a Meta page before this experiment is conducted and I’ll share the link here. We’re still working out the technical and reporting details with Product & Tech. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
App donation reminders: learnings from Italy and plans for the English Campaign
In August, we collaborated with the Wikipedia App team to run an experiment in the Italian and English versions of the App in Italy for non-logged in users. During this 30 day experiment users were prompted to set up a donation reminder through a small, in-article element; screenshot included here.
The initial results were very positive. We saw a lower donation rate than with our normal banners, but a high portion of people who set a donation reminder followed through with a gift; 23%.
Building on this early success, we want to iterate the feature and test it as an enhancement to our standard “Maybe later” banner option for App users in the upcoming Big English campaign. That option gets relatively low conversion, so we hope that by giving readers more choice when we follow up, we’ll see a gain in performance while still balancing reader experience. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The quote in the #Background section: I use Wikipedia often... even multiple times some days. I value Wikipedia and am happy that it's "free". I know that ALL freedom comes with a cost... so opting for a small monthly donation that will add up to 3 times what I've given annually is a bargain! – Donor, United States is sarcasm right? Basically, small re-occurring donations are ripping them off. Don't whitewash it, I like the balance.
Anyway, the main reason I am posting this is that I was confused by the users were prompted to set up a donation reminder through a small, in-article element above. I figured out that by "users" it means potential donors and the in-article element is just a local widget. For a moment, I thought Wikipedia editors (users) were going to strategically select ad locations by editing articles (in-article). Commander Keane (talk) 14:11, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, @Commander Keane, thanks for your feedback. You're right in your final understanding: this customizable reminder is meant for potential donors, and by 'in-article' we mean that it will be placed in the flow of the page vs. appearing as a pop-up or something more conspicuous. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone
In December, we are planning to run a couple of fundraising video tests on Wikipedia. We’re looking forward to learning from this new format and seeing whether video can help us reach and inspire new audiences, particularly younger readers. This is a small, time-bound test designed to help us understand what resonates; we’ll share learnings along the way. The videos will be embedded in the banners and are set to not auto-play. We’re looking forward to exploring this together. JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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