How to write a Wikipedia page for your charity

Wikipedia has been around for a long time, but there are still lots of benefits to creating a page for your charity. It can increase your credibility and help establish you as an expert in your field.

 

Search engines, like Google, consider Wikipedia to be a trustworthy source, so it can increase your search rankings and help more people to find your website.

 

But creating a Wikipedia page isn’t easy. This article explains the strict review process and guides you through the different steps to take to hopefully get your page approved.

 

It’s also important to be aware that anyone can add information to and edit Wikipedia pages. This means you would need to regularly monitor your page to make sure its accurate, which can prove time-consuming.

 

 

The review process

 

Wikipedia discourages people from creating and editing pages for an organisation they are paid by, as its harder to make the content objective and non-promotional. But you can publish, and contribute to, your own page if you disclose the conflict of interest to Wikipedia editors.

 

You’re only going to be considered for a Wikipedia page if your charity has done something that stands out and has a “unique story or angle”. It can’t be promotional.

 

The main reason Wikipedia pages don’t get approved is an organisation’s lack of notability. “Notability” is a test used by Wikipedia editors to decide whether a topic should have its own page.  

 

Wikipedia says: “An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. All content must be verifiable. If no independent, third-party, reliable sources can be found on a topic, then Wikipedia should not have an article on it.”

 

Information needs to be verified by reliable, independent sources, so if you don’t have published articles about your charity, you may find it hard to get a page approved.

 

The sources should be secondary as they provide the most objective evidence of notability, and you should have a few sources. You can read more about notability on Wikipedia and what they’re looking for.

 

 

How to create a Wikipedia page

 

We take you through the different steps to create your charity’s Wikipedia page:

 

1. Research Wikipedia

 

Do some research so you understand how to create pages that are less likely to be deleted or challenged.

 

2. Create a Wikipedia account

 

You need to be a registered user to create and edit Wikipedia pages. 

 

3. Edit existing pages

 

It’s recommended that you start editing existing Wikipedia pages on other topics before creating your own page. This will help you to get to grips with Wikipedia’s content management system and understand how to make edits. Make sure you edit topics that you know about.

 

It will also increase your reputation and show editors that you’re serious about Wikipedia.

 

4. Gather your sources

 

Spend time pulling together a list of third-party sources that have been published about your organisation. An article on the Content Marketing Institute website says the sources need to be factual and unbiased.

 

For example, when the author of the article created a page for one of her technology clients she worked with, she included information about competitors and their technology.

 

5. Draft your page

 

Read other Wikipedia pages to get a sense of how they’re written. They need to be simple, have a neutral tone, not be biased and be original copy.

 

Use the Wikipedia structure to write your page: draft an introduction and split the content up under different headings. Then cite your sources that you’ve gathered.

 

6. Submit your page to be reviewed

 

Once you’re happy with your page, you need to submit it for review. This can take anything from a few days to a few weeks. It’s important to be prepared to speak with Wikipedia editors and answer their queries about your page.

 

7. Monitor your page

 

If your page is approved, then you should regularly update it to make sure the information is accurate. It will show people that you’re being transparent, which will help to build trust in your brand.

 

 

What to do if your page isn’t approved

 

If your page doesn’t get through the review process, don’t submit it again unless you can improve the sources. Wikipedia records the number of rejected submissions you make. Instead, spend time working to get coverage for your organisation in publications.

 

You may want to consider creating a page for your founder rather than your charity, if they have done something noteworthy and have articles published about them.