Why do I see donation banners on Wikipedia
Every year, the international Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) runs a fundraising campaign. For a few weeks, these banners and pop-ups appear on Wikipedia to invite readers to support the site through a financial donation. These campaigns generally last for around a month, and then the banners will disappear until the following year.
You can support Wikimedia locally
While these banners collect donations for the WMF and the international Wikimedia movement as a whole, you can support Wikimedia Australia directly. Local donations fund training for editors, workshops, and events across the country. This helps to grow and strengthen our community here at home. If you’d like to support that work, you can do so here: Make a Donation to Wikimedia Australia.
Why the banners appear
Each year, the donation banners are organised by the WMF, the not-for-profit organisation that hosts Wikipedia, based in the United States. The banners play an important role in attracting donations, keeping Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms free to use, advert-free, and accessible to all. Wikipedia and the WMF rely on these millions of small donations from around the world.
What your donation supports
Funds raised through the banners support the global Wikimedia movement. This includes:
- Technical infrastructure: maintaining the servers, security, and engineering work necessary to keep Wikipedia running reliably, securely, and quickly worldwide.
- Access and languages: ensuring Wikipedia is accessible in hundreds of languages on various devices, from basic internet connections to modern smartphones.
- Community support: funding volunteer coordinated and community-led projects, events, edit-a-thons, and grants globally.
- Free knowledge: defending, growing and protecting free knowledge, ensuring accurate, relevant, and unbiased information.
- Legal safeguards: defending the rights of volunteers and providing legal protections for the free knowledge ecosystem.
Your donation to either the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia Australia are both greatly appreciated and help to create and share free and reliable information on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms.
Other ways to get involved
Donating money isn’t the only way to support free knowledge. You can also:
- Become a member of Wikimedia Australia
- Subscribe to our newsletter Announce
- Follow us on social media
Or even better - edit Wikipedia! Sharing your knowledge is one of the most impactful contributions you can make. This is a form of donation too! We offer regular, free, “Introduction to Wikipedia” online workshops to train new editors in how to edit. Anyone is welcome to attend, so look for these events on our website.
In summary, the donation banners you see on Wikipedia each year support the global work of the Wikimedia Foundation, while donations to Wikimedia Australia directly strengthen local projects, training and community events. However you choose to contribute - whether by donating, becoming a member or editing - you’re helping to keep Wikipedia free, reliable and accessible for everyone.
Support Wikimedia Australia today and help grow free knowledge right here at home!
More about donations
The WMF is committed to protecting the privacy rights of all donor supporters and will never sell, trade, or rent nonpublic personal information. Please see the WMF Donor privacy policy. Wikimedia Australia has its own Donor Privacy Policy.
If you donate to the WMF fundraising banners or directly to Wikimedia Australia, you currently can’t claim either as a tax deductible donation. It's something we are actively working towards and aim to change in the future.
Image attribution: Martin Kingsley from Melbourne, Australia, > CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
