This year’s Wikipedia annual fundraising campaign was most successful ever with a record breaking USD $20 million donation from over 1 million people from almost every country.
To understand who are the donors and what motivated them to donate, Wikipedia conducted readers survey and results of which are really interesting.
- 47% of readers are simply unaware that Wikipedia is a non-profit entity run entirely on donations from the general public.
Lack of awareness is highest in Russia 64% but on the other hand awareness is highest in Egypt 70% and India 61%.
Besides awareness other reasons for donating or not donating to Wikipedia are shown below:
- Reasons for Donating:
![Where Does Wikipedia Donations Come From [Study]](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/800px-Readers_Survey_2011_Reasons_for_donating_to_Wikipedia.png "800px-Readers_Survey_2011_Reasons_for_donating_to_Wikipedia")
- Reasons for not donating:
![Where Does Wikipedia Donations Come From [Study]](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Readers_Survey_2011_Reasons_for_not_donating_to_Wikipedia1.png "Readers_Survey_2011_Reasons_for_not_donating_to_Wikipedia")
Readers from India (42%), Egypt (33%) and US (33%) are most likely to donate and readers from Germany (13%), France (11%) and Japan (15%) were relatively less interested to donate.
Note: Results above are from a sample of Wikipedia’s reader population, not drawn from actual donor data.
