Comment by cbeach

> In 2010: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses were about $20m

The numbers are worse than that. FY2009-10 expenses were $10.3M. FY2024-25: $190.9M. 19x increase in fifteen years.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics

Salaries alone were $106.9M last year (from the Foundation's own Form 990 FAQ). And it's not as if the money is needed: the Foundation holds $296M in assets, plus a further $169M in a separate endowment.

Wikipedia's own editors held an RfC in 2022 and found "broad, near-unanimous consensus" that the donation banners were misleading - the ones hinting the site might go dark without your £2.

  https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-foundation-donate.html

The spending grew anyway. What do donors clicking those banners imagine they're funding?