Wikipedia Raises $16 Million in Donations, Double What It Made Last Year

Wikipedia has managed to raise the $16 million in donations it set out to less than two months ago. The site's most ambitious goal to date was reached in record time and Wikipedia and its sister sites should be well funded for 2011. As an added benefit, we can finally enjoy a Wikipedia without Jimmy Wales' face all over the place, at least for the next 10 months or so.

"Every year the Wikimedia Foundation sets a goal that it knows will be a stretch. They have to do it, because the Wikimedia websites and movement keep growing," Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, wrote in the thank you note now adorning Wikipedia articles.

"Wikipedia is now the fifth most visited website in the world, but our staff, infrastructure and budget are just a fraction of any other top 10 website's," he said.

For 2011, Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia and related projects, set out to raise $16 million in donations from its users, a big bump over last year's goal of $7.5 million.

In 2009, Wikipedia managed to raise $8 million from its fund-raising campaign and then an additional $2 million from a Google donation.

This year, it raised double what it did last year from user donations alone. The average donated sum for 2010 was $22, not a big change from the previous year. However, a lot more people donated, over 500,000 compared to 230,000 in 2009.

And, while the fact that Jimmy Wales seemed to stare at every Wikipedia visitor in the past two months from the header banner ad may have been a bit creepy for some, it's the one thing largely responsible for the increased number of donations.

In any case, $16 million in less than two months is a great way of leading to Wikipedia's 10th birthday.

"But this year is a little more incredible than most because this year we celebrate Wikipedia's tenth anniversary. It's so important that we kick the year off just like this: by fully funding the Wikimedia Foundation's budget to support Wikipedia and all the sister projects as we head into the next decade of our work together," Wales explained.