Wikimedia Foundation Raises $25 Million In 9 Days

The Wikimedia Foundation has raised $25 million after completing a short nine day fundraising effort. The fundraiser reached the $25 million milestone thanks to donations from more than 1.2 million donors.

The Wikimedia fundraiser was hosted on Wikimedia’s English-language websites in the following five countries: US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

In comparison, the 2011 Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser raised $20 million during a much longer 46 day period.

The next Wikimedia fundraiser will occur in April 2013.

The not-for-profit organization uses donations to power the website and develop additional pages that are free of traditional internet advertising. Funds raised are used for server infrastructure maintenance, to create and purchase improved software, and to make Wikipedia available to users all around the world.

In keeping with its goals towards transparency, Wikipedia hosts its 2012-2013 Annual Plan here.

The Wikimedia Foundation is currently operated by more than 80,000 volunteer editors, photographers and free-knowledge advocates.

At the time of this article, Wikimedia has authored more than 23 million volunteer-created articles in over 285 languages, and the not-for-profit is visited by more than 475 million people monthly.

The Wikimedia Foundation most recently launched WikiData, a project meant to create a semantic, machine-readable database that can be edited by anyone. Wikimedia also launched Wikimedia Labs in 2012, a project based on OpenSack that will help Wikipedia grow more smoothly as it expands its services.

Have you donated to Wikipedia, or do you plan to donate to the platform in the future?