Those banners on Wikipedia asking you to donate just raised $20 Million, sukkaaaz*…
*note that thats 20 million US dollars (currency) – comma – (pronoun) sukkaaaz. Not 20 million suckers. that’d be cool though. Im gonna have a lollipop drive. Imagine if lollipops could drive? I bet BlowPops would rock a Ferrari and DumDums would be in Chevy Volts. But seriously – whats the deal with airline food?
The San Francisco-based non-profit group that maintains Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, officially closed its annual fundraising drive on Tuesday. The total amount raised: $20 million.
That’s a record, and a step up from the $16 million Wikimedia raised last year during a nearly two-month-long fundraising effort.
Raising $20 million may seem commonplace by the standards of today’s super-heated venture capital start-up world. But given the difficult economic environment, and some of the struggles that other non-profits have experienced raising money, Wikimedia’s result is notable.
The drive garnered some big-ticket donations, such as $500,000 from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife’s foundation. But according to Wikimedia, the majority of the pledges came from more than a million ordinary folks coughing up donations in the $20 range.
The money will help Wikimedia — whose more than 20 million Wikipedia articles are written and edited for free by volunteers — pay for the technology and infrastructure necessary to keep the service growing, develop new features for the website and bolster its legal defense fund.
Wikimedia’s record-breaking fundraising drive still isn’t enough to cover the 90-employee organization’s operating budget. According to Wikimedia communications head Jay Walsh, the operating budget for the 2011 fiscal year ending June 30 is $28 million.