Last year, more than 1.1 million people donated the equivalent of USD30 million in 80 different currencies to the Wikimedia Foundation. This year, the Wikipedia operator seeks to raise USD50 million.

According to a report by VentureBeat, Wikipedia on Tuesday started fundraising again and made the announcement via a site-wide banner.  

Wikipedia is asking its readers to keep the website online and ad-free for another year by donating to the foundation. The banner said that the fundraiser would be done within an hour if each reader could donate USD3. 

Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that runs the #5 website in the world. It has 175 staff serving over 500 million users around the world. To protect Wikipedia's independence, the foundation doesn't run ads or rely on government funding, the report said.  

VentureBeat said that part of the funds will go to expanding the Wikimedia headcount. Based on its latest annual plan, the foundation intends to hire 19 new developers, five new people in its grants department and one additional person to support itsnlanguage translation efforts. 

Wikipedia has survived on donations averaging USD15, the report said.