The original thread emphasized too much on a few grants, which I feel is a minor issue considering how small part of the annual revenue they were. Not surprised Wikipedia is able to defend it easily.<p>> "Awards and grants" amounted to $9.8 million, of which $5 million (possibly $5.5 million) represented a grant to the Wikimedia Foundation's own Endowment held by the Tides Foundation. This leaves somewhere between $4 and $5 million for actual grants made to the community – a figure dwarfed by the Wikimedia Foundation's $50 million budget surplus in 2020–2021. There was no lack of money for grants.<p>The actual problem is that the Foundation reached its endowment goal, five years before the the deadline it set [1], and yet, they keep guilt-tripping and pretending as if they are running out of money. How's it not profiteering? They could be honest and add, "We have already reached our goal. But raising more could help us find more avenues to increase the world's knowledge," and they would be completely in the right. I bet fewer people would donate if they realized that they are not funding running expenses, at all.<p>Addendum: If you're considering donating to Wikipedia, I suggest you look into doing it for Internet Archive. The complexity of their project and running expenses is way more than Wikipedia, and yet, they just received 12% of the amount that Wikipedia got in 2020 [2]. They just have $4M in net assets, and yet, I have never seen them guilt-tripping regular users.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767/202013219349323056/full" rel="nofollow">https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...</a>