Wikipedia’s Annual Fund Drive Reaches 10,000 Donations

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

It’s time for the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual fund drive. Wikimedia is the nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia. According to a press release emailed to me, the drive reached its 10,000 donor after only 9 days, with the 10,000th donation being from a user in Finland, who donated 10 Euros at 8:58 UTC (4.58 ET) on November 1st.

The fund drive, much like drives for public TV or public radio stations … but without interruptions of “programming” Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket … runs from October 22nd to December 22nd. At the time of this writing, there have been 12,703 donations.

While many (including yours truly) frequently use Wikipedia as a primary source of information, founder Jimmy Wales has discouraged academic use of it.

Still, if you refresh the home page of Wikipedia when you select a language, at the top it’ll have a running tab of donations, as well as comments from users who donated. Many of them credit Wikipedia for help in school.

One example was “”University would not be the same without Wikipedia.” — Anon.” and another was “”college would be impossible without wikipedia!” — katy tull.” Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

We Say: If you use Wikipedia, think about donating. They accept Paypal and other methods.