Answers archive/December 2011

Finance: The difference between charging for services and asking for donations

What's the difference between selling Wikipedia and asking for donations? Are the projects really "free" if you ask for money from people who read it?

The Wikimedia Foundation's core mission is to encourage the growth, development and distribution of educational materials and to provide these to the public free of charge. The Foundation does not want to limit access to these educational resources to those who can afford to pay and are in fact always looking for more ways to get the information out there, even to people who do not have access to the internet. The difference between asking for donations and charging for Wikipedia and the other projects is that the donor model allows the Foundation to gather enough revenue to continue offering the projects without requiring payment. People can contribute financially if they are able and so inclined, but if they are not in position to pay can continue to access the resources for free. --Maggie Dennis 14:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)