It isn't an issue of a 'fractional amount'. According to their 2021 financial statements that vast majority of the money they raise goes to salaries and wages t

It isn't an issue of a 'fractional amount'. According to their 2021 financial statements that vast majority of the money they raise goes to salaries and wages to run 'programs'- work activities separate from the maintainance and management of the website Wikipedia. Note that these salaries are entirely separate from general and administrative salaries and fundraising salaries that might be more directly related to the health of Wikipedia. These salaries (which is where almost all the money wiki raises goes) are used to fund these kind of projects: https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/ I'm sure these projects are goodwork, but when people see a banner add on wikipedia, a plea from wikipedia to keep wikipedia alive, and then click the button to support wikipedia they aren't purposefully supporting writing software to detect harassment in online communities, increasing the diversity of the volunteer pool, suing the NSA to stop internet surveillance, etc etc... Wikimedia has access to a pile of money and they're growing their mission to match the pile of money. Unfortunately the size of that mission will always outpace the size of the pile of money, and it's a never ending feedback loop. giant 'mega-corp' charities are rarely as useful as smaller, mission-focused ones. I don't want the EFF to fight child poverty - that's what UNICEF is for. If the EFF started to do that tomorrow I would have to question how well focused and effective their leadership was. I have been a regular donator to Wikipedia but after the last round of HN articles prompted me to read their financial statements I regret to say that I won't be again until they sharpen their focus. I suspect the average donator to Wikimedia and the HN audience are a pretty big overlap - I think wikimedia has a huge problem here, even if we assume that it's just one of perception. If they opened their books and were a little more transparent with how program funding at wikimedia works to demonstrate that this money is in fact pushing wikipedia forward I would consider restarting donations and I'm sure other people would as well.