Help Us Change the World/en

Why free knowledge changes everything &mdash; and how you can help.



This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and other free knowledge projects.

You are one of more than 300 million people who use Wikpedia every month: thank you. Together, we are documenting our history and society, our science and technology, our culture, our environment. For ourselves. For future generations.

Wikipedia gives you free, instant access to 14 million articles about every imaginable subject, from rugby to opera, from Soviet animation to skeleton shrimps, from French politicians to Macedonian dance festivals. Written by volunteers. Illustrated with millions of photos, drawings, and other media. Available in 270 languages, from Abkhaz to Zulu.

People from around the world have sent us stories about how Wikipedia has affected their lives.

After discovering Wikipedia, Adama Diop from Senegal was surprised that he could add to it. He started an article in the French Wikipedia about his small village, Agnam-Goly, which is in the north-east of the country and has just 3,143 inhabitants. But he also wanted to illustrate it. After four months, he could afford a digital camera, and uploaded more than a thousand photographs of his village.

Thanks to volunteers like Adama, the world is becoming a village, and Wikipedia its library. Read more stories or share your own.

Wikipedia is run by a charity and supported by the people who use it. Donations pay for the hundreds of computers that power Wikipedia, for Internet connectivity through which the information gets to you, for maintaining our technology and making it better, for recruiting and supporting volunteers, for improving mobile and offline access.

Wikipedia represents our best effort to share humanity's collective knowledge, and to make it available for free, forever. Free knowledge changes everything, because it belongs to all of us. As Wikipedia develops and grows, so does our shared understanding of the world, and of each other. Help us so we can continue to change the world: please make a donation today.

About our campaign

Our goal is to raise USD 7.5 million in this year's campaign, out of our budget of USD 10.4 million. Philanthropic foundations and carefully developed business partnerships cover the gap. USD 1.2 million is put into a reserve fund for the future, the rest is spent, primarily on technology and staffing. Please see our FAQ for more information.