{"id":63,"date":"2010-11-22T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-22T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyoteblog.posterous.com\/online-volunteers-coordinate-wikimedia-fundra"},"modified":"2017-03-09T11:32:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T19:32:00","slug":"online-volunteers-coordinate-wikimedia-fundra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2010\/11\/online-volunteers-coordinate-wikimedia-fundra\/","title":{"rendered":"Online volunteers essential to Wikimedia fundraising"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my new blog home. Welcome! The more than 600 entries at my blog home for the last five years<\/a> will move in the coming weeks, I hope (Posterous<\/a> is working on it). If not, let’s hope they stay at my old blog home <\/a> indefinitely! <\/em><\/p>\n

\"WikimediaInstead of hiring a consultant to lead its annual fall fundraising campaign<\/a>, as it has in the past, the Wikimedia Foundation<\/a> is involving online volunteers to design this year’s annual fundraising efforts. About 900 online volunteers have participated\u00a0in online planning sessions\u00a0over the past five months, designing and submitting online banners, and testing banners and other fundraising messages. Campaign communications that got the best test results are being adopted. The campaign is already outpacing last year\u2019s in terms of money raised.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia<\/a> is the highest profile activity of Wikimedia, with around 17 million entries\u00a0in more than 270 languages, but its not the only project of this foundation. Have a look at all the Wikimedia projects<\/a> to learn more about their various initiatives — all involving online volunteers.<\/p>\n

What’s great about this campaign is that the volunteers aren’t being involved because of old-paradigm reasons like “We can’t afford a consultant so we’ll get volunteers to do this activity” or “Online volunteers are free<\/a>! so we’re going to save money!” No, volunteers are being involved because Wikimedia has realized that volunteers — some of their most dedicated stakeholders — are the BEST people to lead this activity! <\/strong><\/p>\n

In an interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy<\/a>, Philippe Beaudette, a former volunteer who is\u00a0now\u00a0a Wikimedia Foundation staff member, said volunteers have been\u00a0essential in making sure this year’s campaign messages are\u00a0relevant in dozens of different countries where Wikipedia<\/a> has avid readers. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t know how to ask for money in Zimbabwe, but now I know where to find the volunteers who can ask for money in Zimbabwe,\u201d he says. \u201cThe cultural influence and diversity that have come together to support this fund raiser are overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was assumed that a message from Jimmy Wales<\/a>, the founder of Wikipedia, would do better than a solicitation from another spokesperson. But, says Mr. Beaudette, \u201cwe tested another banner from a young woman in Jakarta, Indonesia, and her banner did almost as well. She had one memorable line, \u2018If you have knowledge, you must share it,\u2019\u201d which proved to be compelling to donors.<\/p>\n

Mr. Beaudette says the foundation set out clear rules for participation from the start – something that is essential in effective online volunteering\/virtual volunteering<\/a>. Planning and discussion sessions with online volunteers began weekly and are now daily.<\/p>\n

This is at least the second time the Wikimedia Foundation has involved online volunteers in the decision-making processes at the organization: more than a year ago, online volunteers, drawn mostly from the ranks of online volunteer editors of Wikipedia<\/a>, engaged in a year-long process to develop a strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement<\/a>. Wikimedia wanted their help in understanding what its initiatives should be in five years, and how Wikimedia could get there from here. I was a volunteer in that process; I started by adding myself to the Wikimedia expert database. I was later asked to join a Wikimedia task force<\/strong> – specifically, the Community Health Task Force<\/a>. I was able to contribute probably eight hours total, over two weeks. I summarized my own recommendations here<\/a>, and many of these became a part of the final proposal regarding volunteer recognition<\/a> at Wikimedia.<\/p>\n

As I said in my blog last year spotlighting Wikimedia’s activities<\/a>, I love it when an organization invites volunteers to contribute to strategic plans, and I love it when they provide an online way to do so.<\/strong> It’s always a good thing to do. No matter what happens, Wikimedia can at least say, “Wow, we have a LOT of community members\/volunteers who REALLY care about our future!” Can YOUR nonprofit say that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

But note that this online volunteering effort still requires paid staff to support the volunteers and coordinate their efforts. By the logic of many people, because Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation initiatives involve thousands of online volunteers, the organization should have no budget — because volunteers are FREE, right? Wrong… Even at Wikimedia, online volunteers are not free, and here’s why<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my new blog home. Welcome! The more than 600 entries at my blog home for the last five years will move in the coming weeks, I hope (Posterous is working on it). If not, let’s hope they stay at my old blog home indefinitely! Instead of hiri…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[553,176,334,523,570,532,1365],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-crowdsourcing","tag-engagement","tag-online","tag-value","tag-virtual-volunteering","tag-volunteers","tag-wikipedians"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-11","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/1810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}