How to do better than the Wikipedia year-end fundraising campaign

If you visit Wikipedia, you've seen their year-end fundraising campaign. Here's one of them:

What they're doing right

• It's easy to give. The reply is right next to the appeal (I've cropped it out to make the appeal more legible). It's a simple, well-designed form.
• Repetition. Every time you visit Wikipedia, you get some version of this campaign.
• Includes a monthly giving option. Always do this! Especially online.

What they're doing wrong

• It's about Wikipedia, not the donor. People give to support something they use and value. Or to put their values to work. Often a mixture of both. That's why the most successful fundraising focuses on the donor, not the organization.
• Low anchoring. When you name an amount of money in fundraising, it pulls the amounts people give toward it. So when you throw out $2.75 and $16.36, you encourage people to think about those amounts ... well below the $70+ you can normally expect when you raise funds online.
• Negative social proof. People do what other people do. So when you say that 98% of Wikipedia readers don't respond, you're making it clear that not giving is the normal thing. It would be far better to talk about the many, many people who are giving: Social proof that giving is something people do.

Wikipedia straddles two fundraising propositions. It's a service people value and may be willing to voluntarily pay for, like the arts or public broadcasting. It's also a cause: free information, not influenced by commercial interests. If you value that, you should support it. The fundraising should speak into both realities.

It should also speak more closely to the realities of what motivates donors to donate.

Wikipedia, if you're listening, drop me a line!

from Future Fundraising Now http://bit.ly/2BJmGxf