The fundraising effort, by the way of a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia's founder - posted on the web sites of Wikipedia and The Wikimedia Foundation in December, is raking in money! Starting on a great footing with $2 million from over 50,000 contributors in just eight days of the web posting, the fundraising presently stands at $6.2 million raised by over 125,000 donors.

The nonprofit organization - named the Wikimedia Foundation - which manages Wikipedia, the world's largest free online encyclopedia, depends on donations, grants and gifts to operate. The organization announced on Friday that it has raised sufficient funds to operate Wikipedia till the end of June.

Thanking the donors for their overwhelming response to his appeal, Wales said: "This campaign has proven that Wikipedia matters to its users, and that our users strongly support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet."

He elaborated that the donations will cater to the routine functioning of the foundation, including servers and bandwidth; expansion of open source software; and the salaries of its 23 staff members. In addition, the funds will go towards supporting Wikipedia's international network of volunteers, and outreaching measures like Wikipedia Academies, in-person workshops that help attendees gain an understanding about using and editing Wikipedia.

Ever since its foundation in 2001, Wikipedia has become the fourth most popular website worldwide. Though it could easily make millions through advertising, the organization has never resorted to the option largely because it wants readers and writers to run Wikipedia collectively as a society.