If you’re online it’s likely you use Wikipedia.

Hopefully, you haven’t bought into the myth that stuff on the internet is free; that if it doesn’t have ads it doesn’t cost anything to present.

Everything on the internet costs: from the hardware to the software to the content — even when much of the effort is volunteer there is still stuff that costs money and always will.

For that reason I’m sharing my annual letter from Wikipedia’s parent, Wikimedia.

I may not be able to donate to as many places as I once did, but Wikimedia is always on my list. I hope you will put it on yours.

Excerpt from the email I received.

Dear Miki,

It’s a little awkward to talk about this, but the reality is that if enough people don’t pitch in every year, Wikipedia wouldn’t survive. The only alternative, then, would be to solicit advertising partners and sponsorships. Sell Wikipedia to the highest bidder. But then it wouldn’t be Wikipedia.
As the Internet is increasingly sold to the highest bidder through paywalls and advertisers, Wikipedia remains independent. We are proud of our status as a non-profit and are grateful to readers like you for maintaining our independence over the years. Let’s not change that. Please give today.
Wikipedia is possible because of a powerful idea: that people, like you and me, can participate in building the world’s knowledge and making it freely available to everyone, everywhere.

Today, thanks to the support of millions of volunteer contributors and supporters, you can wander Wikipedia for hours. With more than 40 million Wikipedia articles and 35 million freely licensed images, Wikipedia can answer almost any question, and take you places you’ve never been.

Your donation supports the creation and sharing of free knowledge in real, practical ways. It helps us make Wikipedia fast, secure, and accessible to everyone in the world. It helps us bring free access to Wikipedia in places where high mobile data costs prevent people from going online. It helps us support people who are digitizing knowledge currently locked away in analog archives. It protects Wikipedia from the constant threats to free knowledge and the open internet.

Your support means that you can find the information you need now, wherever you may be—to settle a bet with a friend at a dinner party, or to understand the world around us.

Donating to Wikipedia makes you the champion of a powerful idea.

Wikipedia will continue to evolve, grow, and meet new challenges. We’re excited and eager to meet these and more. Your donation will help us get there.

Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Many employers will generously match employee contributions: please check with your employer to see if they have a corporate matching gift program.

Image credit: Wikimedia Foundation

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2017 at 1:15 am and is filed under Business info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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