Wikimedia Foundation has successfully generated $25 million in funds thanks to their 2012 fundraising campaign. The non-profit organization runs a number of sites including the very popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The foundation started soliciting donations from November 27 and so far has gotten 1.2 million supporters to contribute financially to the effort.
The Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Sue Gardner, has stated that she was happy the campaign was successful in allowing the organization to achieve its overall goal of providing free content to users from around the world.
The fundraiser advertised in five countries including United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. The nine day campaign only showed up on the English version of Wikipedia for these countries. The most successful 24-hour period for the 2012 campaign grabbed $2,365,564 in donations from 145,573 donors. The current effort is a lot shorter than last year’s 46 day campaign in which the 2011 fundraising efforts bagged $20 million in donations from a group of 1 million supporters.
The money that is raised during the year is used for a number of different things at Wikimedia including paying off obligations, develop technology infrastructure, create site features, provide mobile features, paying legal fees and support its many volunteers around the world.
Wikipedia has been putting the money that it receives to good use and according to the foundation 2012 has seen a lot of new developments including a partnership with Saudi Telecom Company. The initiative allows 25 million mobile customers from Saudi Arabia to view Wikipedia for free without data charges. There was also the introduction of a new ebook export feature and HTML5 player.
Source: The Next Web
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