In a curious turn of events, a multilingual online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is seeking donations from its users to keep the site running.
Within 19 years of its existence, the site has become the most frequently sought destination for users seeking any kind of information. This is exactly why millions of users across India have been wondering if there is any genuine need for a site that is amongst the most frequently visited.
The site’s mission is to ensure that everyone can share in and access free knowledge. Every other site had to change its business model and involve digital ads. Yet Wikipedia has become one of the few successful free knowledge sites left on the Internet, in large part because it’s supported by readers around the world.
Wikipedia has 5.2 billion visits in July 2020 and was the eight most popular sites in the world quotes Similar Web. Since 2001, the site has collected 50 million articles in nearly 300 languages.
Here’s what the site’s donation page reads…
Wikipedia’s revenue structure
The digital giant is hosted by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation which involves a network of volunteer contributors, editors, and engineers. With zero advertisements, the site almost entirely depends on donations made by its readers. Besides this, a trace of the website’s total revenue is generated from merchandise, including t-shirts, pencils, notebooks, and pens embossed with Wikipedia’s branding.
There are corporate contributors to the site such as Amazon which made a $1 million donation to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2019.
“The Alexa team shares a similar vision with Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation: To make it easier to share knowledge globally,” Amazon said in an official statement.
This is not the first time that Wikipedia is seeking donations. The website raised $28,653,256 between 2018-2019, bringing its total assets to $165,641,425 and in 2019 it garnered $21,619,373.
Of this, 49% of its annual financial gains were spent as direct support to the website; 32% was used for training, tools, events, and partnerships for its network of volunteers; 13% was spent to recruit and pay its staff members, and the remaining 12% was used for its various fundraising initiatives in 2019.
There are 250 employees and over 250,000 global volunteers in Wikipedia. As per their revenue structure, the donations help pay the salaries of its staff members while the volunteers contribute their services to the website for free.
“Reader donations are critical to supporting Wikipedia’s global presence…To meet the needs of readers in India and around the world, we operate an international technology infrastructure comparable to the world’s largest commercial websites,” wrote Pat Pena, Director of Payment and Operations for Wikimedia Foundation, in a blog post.
Has Wikipedia gone bankrupt?
The answer is no. Wikipedia’s assets have grown exponentially with donations over the years. It is a common trait in non-profit organizations to keep an excess amount as a safety net.
Why has Wikipedia sought Indian donations?
Indian readers flock to Wikipedia more than 750 million times a month, the fifth-highest number of views the site receives from any country, reads Pena’s blog post. This is exactly why Wikipedia has launched its first full-fledged fundraising drive in India.
Although most sectors have been facing losses in the pandemic, the digital medium is seemingly rising. Even Wikipedia has found an increase in the number of people turning to the site.
The fundraising campaign was scheduled back in spring this year which had to be shifted to the month of August.
If you are a frequent user of Wikipedia, would you donate?