They don't though. The banner has a whiny tone, but never do they say that they are struggling to keep the site up.
The question as to whether this is manipulative isn't "is there are any clear statement of fact that is unambiguously a lie even in the most charitable possible interpretation?", it's "will this make ill-informed readers think their donations are necessary for Wikipedia's survival, and is this impression created deliberately?"
I think that's a very obvious "yes and yes".
The donations are used for side projects almost all donors are completely unaware of, whose existence and nature are not hinted at in the ads soliciting donations.
They way they DO stay online for a resilient amount of time is by generating money, i.e. through donations.
In fact, they used to say exactly how many months they have left. Now they don't say that, because they feel they can allow themselves that. Does that mean that it makes sense to stop fundraising? No. Because the minute the public doesn't feel that there's an urgency in donating to your cause, then it's someone else's problem, meaning it's nobody's problem and that's how you kill NPOs.
Money generates money. To fund something in perpetuity you need enough that the returns from investing it (taking into account tax, costs, inflation, etc) exceed the annual payment needed. This is not an infinite amount.
I haven't checked the figures but the article claims the foundation has $400 million cash and Wikipedia costs under $2 million per annum. There's no easy way of calculating the maximum annual sum that can be taken out in perpetuity from a well managed endowment but it's certainly a lot more than 0.5%.
Also, last year, the then-Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher was on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. (The wife of the WMF’s PR consultant, the Clinton Foundation’s Craig Minassian, works on the show as a producer.)
In the interview, Noah put it to Maher that the downside of being a non-profit is that “you often struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running. So, two parts. One, is that true and how does it affect you, and then, two, why would you make this thing if it’s not going to make you money?”
Maher’s cheerful answer made no reference to the WMF’s vast money reserves, but emphasised that Wikipedia’s lack of ads was responsible for the site being so trusted today.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...
If you are in the US, you can view the interview clip here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKdn1s9Sjfo&t=270s
If you're in the UK or Europe, use a VPN (Opera e.g. has got one built in).
That episode of the Daily Show was around April 2021. So, their funds were much smaller then.
From the article: “In 2021, the appeals raised a total of $162 million, a 50% year-on-year increase.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12...
At the time they had reported net assets in excess of $77 million. Even by mid-2020, that had increased to $180 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
The Wikimedia Foundation had an 8-figure surplus in 9 of the last 10 years. The only exception was 2013/2014, where the surplus was "only" $8.3M. That was their "worst year" in the last ten years. The Wikimedia Foundation has beaten its own annual revenue record every year of its existence.
https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi...
We ask you, humbly, to help.
We'll get straight to the point: Today we ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence.
We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a little, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of a cup of coffee is all we ask.
...
We know that most people will ignore this message. But if Wikipedia is useful to you, please consider making a donation of or whatever you can to protect and sustain Wikipedia.
In fact, if they stop begging, what percentage of their users will contribute? Will it remain at 2%?
Just saying. If the WMF were working flat out on serving the volunteer community it would be a different matter. But it's taken on a life of its own, with Wikipedia as its cash cow.
Wikipedians wouldn't work for free for a subscription service. The whole project would fork to a new host. The Wikimedia Foundation's own mission statement says, "The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge, in perpetuity."
You can't contribute donations to Firefox; you can only contribute to the Mozilla Foundation, which spends most of the money it gets from donations on things that aren't Firefox.