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If you have to stare at my face on a banner, you have the right to know why I’m asking you for money. Your donation pays for a lot of servers and the ridiculously small staff behind the fifth most visited website in the world. And this year it will pay for some important additions and changes.

So far, we’ve raised $8.7 million. We’re more than halfway toward our annual goal, and your gift of $20, $35, $50 or whatever you can afford would really help.

When Wikipedia started, the technology was patched together by brilliant volunteers. They worked wonders. But we never thought it would have to support 400 million monthly visitors reading 17 million articles in 270 different languages.

Now, we’re finally building the advanced data center that Wikipedia’s needed for years. And we’re hiring long-overdue staff to support our thousands of volunteers.

Our annual fundraising goal of $16 million isn’t some random number we picked out of thin air. It’s exactly what we need to keep Wikipedia strong, secure and available to the hundreds of millions of people who count on it every month.

Thanks for doing what you can, Jimmy Wales,

Wikipedia founder