Press releases/Year-end fundraiser 2005

GIVE THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE: WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION LAUNCHES YEAR-END FUNDRAISER TO SUPPORT PROJECTS

ST. PETERSBURG, FLA., UNITED STATES-December 16, 2005 - The Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org) today announced a three-week fundraising campaign to help support the future operation and expansion of its free, multilingual wiki-based projects. The fundraiser runs from December 16, 2005 through January 6, 2006, and Wikimedia will accept donations in dozens of currencies from individuals and organizations around the globe.

The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of its 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 (www.wikipedia.org), one of the Internet's 50 most visited Web sites.

"Every donation we receive from an individual or an organization helps us bring free educational content to millions of people, including those who cannot afford print encyclopedias and dictionaries," said Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Every dollar, piece of equipment or contributor's time donated has an immeasurable impact on our ability to keep projects going and expand them to help more people."

The Wikimedia Foundation relies primarily on support from individual contributors. Thousands of individuals and organizations around the world have made donations of time, money or hardware, to help support Wikimedia's mission of providing free educational content and information. Thanks in large part to these donations, Wikipedia expanded to approximately 2.5 million total articles covering more than 120 languages. In addition, Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, now contains more than 300,000 free image, audio and video files (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page).

The Wikimedia Foundation has 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. Donations made from other nations may also be tax deductible. See deductibility of donations for details. Please see our fundraising page at http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising for details of making donations via PayPal, MoneyBookers or by postal mail. For all other types of donation, please contact the Wikimedia Board at board at wikimedia.org.