The following is a conversation between Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, Chief Revenue Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Denver Frederick, the Host of The Business of Giving.
Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
Denver: The Wikimedia Foundation was created to ensure that Wikipedia was reserved as a nonprofit entity with respect for community governance and conducted in the public interest and in the public spirit. And here to tell us how they raise the bucks to pay the bills and support their community is Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, chief revenue officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Welcome to The Business of Giving, Lisa!
Lisa: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Denver.
Denver: I’m not sure that many people think about Wikipedia as being a nonprofit organization, but being one, what does that allow you to do?
Lisa: One of the things that it allows us is it allows us to be independent. We’re funded by our readers, and so that aligns our interests with independence. It aligns our interests to the right bias, the right perspective. We’re funded by usually around 8 million people, if you can believe that, around the world in about 30 countries. And they donate an average of $15.
So, it allows us not to be beholden to anybody except for the truth, and to our communities and to our readers.
Our donors are some of just the most generous people in the world. There’s lots of people, billions of people who use Wikipedia, but like I say, 8 million give. And these are people who really value knowledge and really appreciate the work that we do.
Denver: How does it impact the organization, aside from not being beholden, when you have so many people who are supporting the organization… Such a broad base of support like that?
Lisa: It’s amazing. I think our donors are some of just the most generous people in the world. There’s lots of people, billions of people use Wikipedia, but like I say, 8 million give. And these are people who really value knowledge and really appreciate the work that we do.
And so, we hear from them all the time. We get tons of Christmas cards, holiday cards, just letters of support. I have a wall of gratitude in the office, of course, the office that we’re not at right now. And they’re big cheerleaders for our work. And I think it motivates our community. It motivates our staff to just know that so many people out there value us.
And sometimes these donors, they’re students… students in India, sharing $15 with us, or rupees with us. And that motivates you, too, to make sure that you’re spending every dollar wisely because these aren’t wealthy people that are donating… donating to us always, and to really do your best every day. So, it is a great motivating factor as well.
We’re just kind of temporary stewards of this thing. This isn’t our project. This project belongs to the world. This is the collection of the world’s knowledge.
Denver: Probably gives them a sense, too, that Wikipedia belongs to them and not to you, that they own it.
Lisa: Yes. For sure. And I think, as I say to staff, we’re just kind of temporary stewards of this thing. This isn’t our project. This project belongs to the world. This is the collection of the world’s knowledge. And so that’s really motivating, too.
Denver: I bet if you also, Lisa, took a survey of people and asked them whether they donated to Wikipedia, it’d be a lot higher than 8 million because people sometimes think that they have when they haven’t. It’s just the way it goes.
So how do you conduct your campaigns around the globe? Are they all done at the same time, or do you stagger them in some kind of way?
Lisa: Yes. We stagger them. So, I call it the world tour. We’re always fundraising someplace in some language. We take very few weeks off where we’re not running a campaign somewhere in the world. Right now, we’re running a campaign in Sweden, also kind of finishing one up in Italy.
So, what you probably think of is the campaign that we run in the fall, which is our biggest campaign. We fundraise in the fall leading up to the New Year in the big English-speaking countries, US, of course. We raise the bulk of our funds during that campaign, over half. But all these campaigns add up around the world. And like I say, we’re fundraising in about 30 countries a year, and that list is growing; so it’s a really diverse set of donors from every continent.
Denver: Lisa, do you do a lot of testing to see what message, or maybe even where the message is placed and appears will be most effective?
Lisa: We sure do. Yes. It’s the AB testing model, to see what messages resonate with people, which ones fall flat, and also just usability. We try to make it really, really easy for people to give. We have different payment methods, and we try to put forward the ones that people are going to use the most. And so, we’re focused on all of that, having a really good “donation flow” as we call it.
So, all those technical things, you’d be surprised at how much just really paying attention to the details, about how many steps are in your payment flow, how much that increases donations. So, we pay attention to all those details a lot. And I’m really lucky to have a team that is really excited by that work. I know for some people that might seem really boring, just optimizing a Donate button, but my team, they love it. So, I’m really, really lucky.
One of the big things that’s unique about our fundraising…is that the concept of social proof…. In our messages, we found that telling people they’re exceptional, that they’re one of the 8 million that give, actually encourages more people to give than telling them that everybody’s doing it, and you should, too.
Denver: Give me a tidbit of an insight that you’ve discovered that has made the fundraising even better than it was.
Lisa: One of the big things that’s unique about our fundraising, that I think marketers are always really surprised by this, is that the concept of social proof…. In our messages, we found that telling people they’re exceptional, that they’re one of the 8 million that give, actually encourages more people to give than telling them that everybody’s doing it, and you should, too. And that goes against a lot of conventional wisdom.
Denver: Oh sure. Everybody wants the norm. Yes. Absolutely.
Lisa: Yes. That’s taught in business schools. There’s research on it. And we’ve talked to the academics who really work on that theory, and we’ve said, “Hey, do you have any messages? What are we doing wrong here? Why are we not like everybody else where the social proof thing doesn’t work?” And they’ve tried, and they’ve engaged with us, and for whatever reason, we’re the opposite.
And so, the learning there is that what works for everybody doesn’t always work for you, and you have to be open to that and be willing to see it. And listen to the data. Listen to what your donors are telling you. Listen to what they’re responding to and follow it. So, like I say, that’s one of the most unique things about our messaging that’s different than what a lot of people do in fundraising.
Denver: Listening to you reminds me of another example of this done by DonorsChoose, which is a wonderful organization that raises money for teachers in the classroom directly. And their CEO was on the show and told me that they try to test to see who would give the most in this test. And one is a teacher who came from that individual’s hometown. So, it was a teacher in Omaha, Nebraska, or something like that. The second was– what did you major in in school?
Lisa: Public Relations and Political Science.
Denver: So, it would be for a political science teacher, somebody who was a political science teacher, and that’s your real interest. And you want to help that. But you know what he said did, I think, three times better than anything else? It was if the teacher had the same first name as you did. That if her name was Lisa, no matter where she was or where she was teaching… and I know that the Lisas of the world or the Denvers of the world never consciously thought about that, but–
Lisa: And I bet there’s not that many Denvers in the world, so you probably automatically feel a bond with them, right?
What’s different about us than maybe a lot of institutions is we are just very egalitarian by nature. So, our $15 donor doesn’t get treated better than our million-dollar donor. It’s kind of the Wikipedia way. We’re the encyclopedia where everybody can contribute, everybody can edit. And so, the person who has the PhD is on equal footing on Wikipedia with someone in India who just has a high school degree.
Denver: I would normally do that, but it’s also, if that’s the test, I don’t have to give. You know what I mean? Because I’m not going to find one.
Lisa, do you solicit major gifts from donors in the way most nonprofits do? Or is your idea, let’s say, of a major donor different than a lot of other organizations?
Lisa: We do solicit major donors, and we have a lot of them, and they’re a great part of the mix, too. I would say what’s maybe different… and so we attract a certain type of major donor.
What’s different about us than maybe a lot of institutions is we are just very egalitarian by nature. So, our $15 donor doesn’t get treated better than our million-dollar donor. It’s kind of the Wikipedia way. We’re the encyclopedia where everybody can contribute, everybody can edit. And so, the person who has the PhD is on equal footing on Wikipedia with someone in India who just has a high school degree.
And so, the type of major donors that contribute to Wikipedia are ones who are kind of that way themselves. They’re not really interested in special treatment or special recognition, and they just believe in the project. We don’t really have the super fancy events. We do events, but I wouldn’t put them in the super fancy category that you get with a lot of institutions. And so, our major donors are just pretty down-to-earth people.
Denver: I would be inspired to contribute to you as a major donor because you don’t have those super fancy events, which I’m not exactly at home with.
Do you take any commercially-inspired income or ads, responses, or anything along those lines?
Lisa: We don’t have any ad income, but we do have some corporate donors. We have an endowment, and a lot of our corporate donors give to our endowment. And so, it’s a mix, but like I say, about 90% is the small donors, is the small donation.
Denver: Lisa, you also oversee community grants. Tell us about that program and the kind of initiatives that you go around supporting.
Lisa: So Wikipedia, is written by volunteers, and there’s two aspects to our community. One, and I just kind of call it the “unorganized,” so this is the independent community, and that’s the bulk of the editors who just… they love to edit, and they edit.
And then there’s another kind of section of our community that is organized, trying to actively grow the community, get together in person, and host events. And so, we give grants to the community to host like edit-a-thons on particular topics, particularly topics that are missing in Wikipedia. Women scientists, for example, are underrepresented on Wikipedia. They’re ever underrepresented everywhere. And so, we fund edit-a-thons to try to try to fill in that gap, for example.
So those types of organizing events, that’s the bulk of what our funding goes to. So, we have affiliates and chapters and user groups and different groups of people that come together in person around the world. And that’s what the grants support.
Denver: We talked about corporations before. Do you have any partnerships that help you deliver against the mission of Wikipedia?
Lisa: Yes, we do. Obviously, on the distribution front, we’re trying to get our app, for example, out there as much as possible. So, I oversee the partnerships team. We try to get the Wikimedia app placed in as many different app stores around the world, preloaded on devices. So, we are always trying to get Wikipedia out there as much as we possibly can, particularly in places in the world where Wikipedia is not as well-known as it is in the US. So, we’re trying to introduce the product, introduce Wikipedia to those audiences.
Denver: Give us an example where that’s happening — maybe a partner that you’re working with and a part of the world where you’re really trying to create a foothold and a presence.
Lisa: Yes. So there’s a new kind of operating system called KaiOS. So I think in the US, we’re primarily familiar with Apple and with Android, Google, those types of products. But in India and in other kinds of emerging markets in the world, there’s different operating systems, more simple operating systems that we’ve built an app for. So, we formed a partnership with KaiOS, and we built a KaiOS app to get that out to users in these places. So, these are much, much less expensive phones and devices that they’re using. And so, we have to build an app for that market. And those are the markets we’re trying to reach.
Obviously, we want to reach everybody, but where we’re really focusing growth is in emerging markets. And it’s really exciting because these are folks that there’s never been an encyclopedia written in their language, in Hindi. And so being able to build a Hindi community, build community in these places where they can write their own encyclopedia, and then we help them deliver it to everybody in their country or in their language, it’s really rewarding work.
I think we all have pretty good access to libraries, and there’s tons of books printed in English, and the internet is very much in English. But a lot of these languages, there’s not a ton of books printed. And the internet, there’s not a ton of content on the internet in these languages. So being able to serve that market is super rewarding.
Denver: You do sound a little purpose-driven, I must say, when I hear that.
And I would imagine that some of these emerging markets, too, it’s got to be delightful to kind of leapfrog all the legacy systems you have in Europe and in North America. You always wonder how much more they’re going to be on the cutting edge. You see that in Kenya with fintech and things of that sort because there’s no banks. So they just skipped the 20th century and go from the 19th century to the 21st century, and are really going to be, I think, in great shape here a decade or two down the road with what they’re able to do.
Lisa: Yes. For sure. And so, it’s really exciting because there’s so many things we take for granted, right? I think we all have pretty good access to libraries, and there’s tons of books printed in English, and the internet is very much in English. But a lot of these languages, there’s not a ton of books printed. And the internet, there’s not a ton of content on the internet in these languages. So being able to serve that market is super rewarding.
Denver: It’s pretty breathtaking. What? 300 languages or something? You’re ahead of the United Nations. It boggles the mind.
One thing that Wikipedia, Wikimedia is known for is transparency. And you have listed the breakdown of where these dollars go that are contributed. Share that with us.
Lisa: So we spend about 12% on fundraising; it costs us about 9 cents to raise a dollar. That’s a lot of– I mentioned all of those payment processors around the world, that’s the bulk of the fees there, and just building the technical infrastructure to run a big fundraising operation like that. About 13% goes towards just administration and governance; 43% goes towards the technical infrastructure, so the website itself.
And the remainder goes to supporting our communities, which I just discussed earlier, the grants, but also other types of work: legal support that we give to our editors; the training we give to our editors; big events that we host in non-pandemic times to bring our editors together. So, there’s a lot of work that goes into just supporting the volunteer community.
So that’s generally, overall, the breakdown. Most of our funds go to technology, managing a top 10 website… or one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. And then, we have this large volunteer community that we support. Those are the two main expenditures.
Denver: I think that too many people probably just look at you for information and education and knowledge, where in some ways, at your heart, you’re a tech company, because this is just amazing what it takes to get all this information the way it is.
You mentioned the endowment before, and I’ve got a question about that. How does an organization that lives by $15 contributions build up an endowment, which is beginning to approach $100 million?
Lisa: It’s been a number of ways. So we have major donors to the endowment. We have corporate donors to the endowment. We have mid-tier donations to the endowment, and we also have small donors who donate to the endowment as well. So, it’s been a multi-tiered approach.
And then we’ve also built out a really… planned giving program that I’m really excited about. So–
Denver: Tell us about that.
Lisa: We started planned giving just a couple of years ago, and we have over a thousand members of what we call the Wikipedia Legacy Society– people who’ve agreed to leave a portion of their estate to the Wikimedia endowment. And similar to our approach, we have a partnership with a company called FreeWill. So, we’ll help our donors, just right there, generate a will if they don’t have one.
And so, with that approach, we’re getting in a lot of people. And they might not be the wealthiest people. I don’t think we’re competing for planned gifts with Harvard. But we do get a lot of college drop-outs, self-taught people, and you know what? There’s a ton of self-taught people that have been really successful in this world. The endowment was started with a planned gift from a guy named Jim Pacha, who was a college dropout and an aerospace engineer in Colorado. And those are the kind of folks that we tend to attract, people that are self-motivated learners. And it is, again, a great group of people.
Denver: I had the co-founder of FreeWill on the show, and it’s amazing what they’ve been able to do for planned giving across all nonprofits, and very much of it is just asking people, which estate planners never do. Just planting the seed when they do it. And it really is amazing.
Finally, Lisa, for anyone listening, who wants to help support the Wikimedia Foundation through a $15 grant, a little more, or perhaps a planned gift, where do they have to go to do that?
Lisa: You can go to wikimediafoundation.org. That’ll take you both places, or planned giving, just go to wikimediaendowment.org. And you can do both things there, hopefully very seamlessly.
Denver: Fantastic. Well, thanks, Lisa, for being here today. It was just a pleasure to have you on the show.
Lisa: Thank you, Denver.
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