Bangalore: Nearly 10,488 people from India
donated USD 193,657.88 to Wikimedia Foundation/Wikimedia,
during the annual fund raising making India as the sixth large
donor to the organisation.
United States ranked first with 328691 donors donating
USD 10,038,417.59, according to Tinu Cherian, Wikipedian.
In 2009/10, India ranked 16th in terms of donation with
2,956 individuals from India donating USD 52,156.57.
According to Arun Ramarathnam, Executive Commmittee
member Wikimedia India chapter" in my opinion most of the
contributions possibly come from readers"
"I think the increased contributions this year was a
welcome development", he said.
"I do believe it could be attributed to coverage in
broadcast media, visits to various places, proliferation of
meetups across cities, increased awareness. The Banner
campaign on the Main page was very visible and had excellent
recall amongst users," he said.
Ramarathnam also attributed it to Progressive increase in
online transactions in India. "I think contributions would get
better if one could use Online funds transfer from Bank
accounts".
The Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit charitable
organisation dedicated to encouraging the growth, development
and distribution of free, multilingual content, and for
providing full content of these wiki-based projects to the
public free of charge.
The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest
collaboratively edited reference projects in the world,
including Wikipedia, a top-ten internet property.
PTI
