Are there any students in your life? Anyone with a certain lust for learning? Or anyone that blindly stumbles out onto the internet in search of answers to life’s pressing and not so pressing questions? Chances are they–like 450 million others–have stumbled to Wikipedia.
For those of you who haven’t yet made that digital pilgrimage (where have you been?!), Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia. It is a non-profit that relies on donations alone to make ends meet. And as it’s the #5 site on the internet, it requires quite a bit of cash to make those ends meet.
Here’s what their notice says:
Dear Wikipedia readers: We are the small non-profit that runs the #5 website in the world. We have only 150 staff but serve 450 million users, and have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, staff and legal help. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads. We take no government funds. We run on donations. If everyone reading this gave the price of a cup of coffee, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. If Wikipedia is useful to you, take one minute to keep it online another year by donating whatever you can today. We just need .3% of readers to donate an average of about $30. We’re not there yet. Please help us forget fundraising and get back to Wikipedia. Thank you.
And really, who can say no to this face:
Unfortunately, there’s not a good way to give the Wikipedia donation as a gift, but perhaps you could pair your donation with a card like this! Supporting Wikipedia is a great way of supporting anyone who has a love of learning and is constantly seeking more knowledge.. or, just settling bets.