If people find out that they lied, they might become cynical to appeal banners altogether. There are other community projects that deserve the money more than Wikipedia - such as the Internet Archive, or the local food bank. Now they won't get the money, because people have become desensitized.

IMO, cash is the wrong thing to stockpile anyway. They are big enough to benefit from a financial advisor, and with the right portfolio mix, they could both safeguard existing cash and assure a steady income stream so they don't need the donations in the first place.

Wikipedia being loaded is not a bad thing. But a lot of other worthy orgs aren't, and many donors will prefer to send their limited funds to those. Which makes it problematic for the donors if Wikipedia is being coy about already having all the money it needs.

It's just the sheer amount of stockpiling while claiming to be under threat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi...

Wikipedia plays a central role in today's information flows. Wouldn't you want the foundation that stewards such a project to be committed to honesty and transparency?

I think the issue is the manipulative notices. They were A/B tested into perfection and it's obvious the current ones won out because they mislead the reader into believing that Wikipedia needs his help urgently.

Problem is not that they are loaded but they continue to expand their expenses as they get more money

But the people who toil are not paid; they are volunteers.