User:Killiondude/Fundraising 2010

During the course of the Wikimedia Foundation's 2010 Fundraiser, there have been a number of failures on the part of the fundraising staff, with some of the blame likely being shared with the higher-ups. This page will hopefully serve as a starting point for things to keep in mind for those who will be involved in the fundraiser during 2011.

There are a few main issues with the fundraiser that are illustrated by specific events or actions.

Translations
The fundraiser is using http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ to see where readers are located. With this information, they are somehow deciding if readers are near a Wikimedia chapter. If they are deemed to be within a particular chapter's "jurisdiction", then the landing page given is whatever the chapter has decided upon. This is due to a contract negotiated upon between the foundation and chapters. This deal involves an agreement that a portion of the proceeds that chapters receive goes back to the Wikimedia Foundation.

However, due to the way the system is set up, if a chapter does not have their landing pages translated into other languages, a person who cannot understand the majority (or official) language of the region they live in cannot read the landing page they are given when they click on the banner. The banner text itself is localized (by volunteers) if it is one created by the foundation's fundraising team, but the chapters' landing pages aren't always translated. WMDE and Wikimedia France, for example, are two chapters that had not created translated landing pages. By doing this, people who cannot read well in German and French were not able to participate in the fundraiser. This not only hurt the chapters themselves, but also the Wikimedia Foundation since a portion of the funds received go back to them.