An appeal on the Wikipedia website from founder Jimmy Wales has raised over $430,000 in less than 24 hours.
The personal message asked users of the site to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organisation which operates the global community-generated encyclopedia website.
Thirteen thousand individuals donated in the following 24 hours, almost double the previous highest figure for that period. The total is the largest sum that Wikimedia has raised in a single day.
In the appeal, Wales pointed out that "for ten million US dollars a year and with a staff of fewer than 35 people, [Wikimedia] runs the fifth most-read website in the entire world".
The appeal encouraged donations via credit card and Paypal.
Wikimedia runs an annual fundraising campaign to help secure the future and independence of the resource. This year's appeal aims to raise $7.5 million.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Appeal/en?utm_source=2009_Jimmy_Appeal
Comments
The money is being wasted, though
I wish that intelligent people who are not caught in the spell of Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia phenomenon would actually take a good, close look at how the money is being wasted over at the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a pity.
http://tinyurl.com/WMF-myths
Wikimedia shares its income stats
Wikimedia is sharing the details on its appeal income. An interactive bar graph (move your cursor over the bars to find out detailed information) provides comparative data on a day-by-day basis on income for the 2007, 2008 and 2009 appeals.
There is also comparative data on the number of donations per day for each of those campaigns, the daily average totals, and the maximum sum received on each day.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics