Wikimedia Fundraising page

Wikimedia is a non-profit organization that provides computing and network resources to create and distribute <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/free_content">free content</a>. Since we do not plan to ever have advertisements, and we will never charge authors to write or readers to read any of our content, we rely on donations to keep us going.

Unavoidable legal text
All donations will be used for Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation Inc., a Florida not-for-profit corporation, is registered as a charitable organization with the State of Florida's Division of Consumer Services, a division of the State of Florida's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and may lawfully solicit donations under Florida law. Please note that this page and any other link on any Wikimedia related site pointing to this page is not and should not be considered a solicitation to make a donation.

Methods
If you wish to make a donation you can do so by <a href="http://paypal.com">PayPal</a> (credit cards accepted) or through the mail at Wikimedia's head office (see below). Please do not send currency through the mail. Also, sending any foreign drafts, checks or other negotiable instruments may entail significant collection costs, an international postal money order or a check drawn on a US banking institution will make sure your complete donation goes to Wikimedia (otherwise foreign collection costs will be deducted by Wikimedia's bank from your contribution).

 British Pounds

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 Canadian Dollars

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 European Euros

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 Japanese Yen

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 United States Dollars

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You can also send donations via snail-mail to the official public record address of the Wikimedia Foundation:

  Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 
  3911 Harrisburg St. NE 
  St. Petersburg, FL 33703

If sending donations from outside the United States please note (as stated above) that an international money order or other negotiable instrument payable on a United States bank would be appreciated to prevent collection costs. Sending a foreign check to the United States may involve fees in excess of $50 for the processing of the check (or any other kind of draft) if it is drawn on a foreign bank outside the United States. International postal money orders payable in the United States are acceptable and available in post offices in many countries.

Why donate?
There is no profit motive behind Wikimedia and its projects. There are no full-time employees. Virtually all of our work is done by volunteers from all over the planet. On the English Wikipedia alone, these people have created more than 160,000 articles in less than 3 years. Our projects have tens of thousands of viewers per day. A Google search for "Wikipedia" returns more than 2.5 million hits. It is clear that Wikipedia will soon be the largest encyclopedia in the world, and the growth of our other projects is similarly impressive -- and overwhelming.

Although we use free software, hardware is not free, and with just two servers donated by Wikimedia founder Jimbo Wales we simply cannot maintain the reliability and speed that our projects need. If you are a Wikipedia contributor, you may have noticed frequent downtimes or unacceptable server response. To fix this, we need more and faster servers. Our first goal is to purchase a new database server. Our overall hardware needs for the next year could be in the 10,000-20,000 US dollar range. Bandwidth, for now, is covered by Jimbo Wales.

To guarantee availability, it would also be helpful if we could employ a server administrator. Brion Vibber (see below) has been both part-time server administrator and lead developer of the Wikimedia software, MediaWiki, for many months -- but being woken up in the middle of the night to figure out the cause of a bizarre server crash is not the kind of work that many volunteers like to do. The truth is, without the help of Brion and other highly committed volunteers, the server situation would be much worse than it is now.

Small donations can already make a big difference, but if you know of any foundations or individuals who could provide more substantial funds to this non-profit organization, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Please do not feel coerced into donating money. If you don't have any, or do not want to donate, you are and will continue to be free to use our content. This is guaranteed by our license. Only donate if you can afford it, and if you think the future growth of Wikipedia is important.

Deductibility of donations
Please note donations may not be tax deductible except for U.S. residents and nationals -- all questions in this regards should be directed to your tax professional. For those outside the United States please contact your local tax authorities to determine if there is any tax treaty or other law that may allow you to deduct your donations to Wikimedia from your income. Wikimedia is in the process of applying for official tax exempt status from the United States Internal Revenue Service as it is a new organization (corporate status granted: June 20, 2003) it may benefit from an automatic exemption from the IRS; if you make a donation you will receive the required paperwork.

Comments, questions?
If you have any questions regarding donations, you can ask Wikimedia founder <A HREF="mailto:jwales@bomis.com">Jimmy Wales</A>. You can also contact one of our <A HREF="http://mail.wikipedia.org">project mailing lists</A>, many Wikimedia participants read these lists and can reply to you there. Finally, if your question concerns Wikipedia, the <A HREF="http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ">FAQ</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_pump">Village pump</A> are good places to check out.

Developer support
You can also donate to the <a href="http://leuksman.com/misc/donate">Brion Vibber notebook computer fund</a>. In case you didn't know, Brion is Wiki(m)edia's lead developer and all-around technical issues man. With rare exception, he's involved every day in critical aspects of MediaWiki and Wikimedia server maintenance.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "<a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/GNU_FDL.html">GNU Free Documentation License</a>". <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Donations&action=history">Old revision history</a>, <a href="http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikimedia_Fundraising_page&action=history">History since 24 September 2003</a>