Indeed, it's highly manipulative. Wikimedia does way more than "just" Wikipedia, and the majority of the money goes to these other activities. Now, I'm not saying that's bad, some of those activities might be well worth it.
But the banners I've seen have invariably been about the imminent demise of Wikipedia. Not that they got lots of other side projects they want funded.
Weird, I haven't seen any recent banners frame it in terms of demise of Wikipedia. The urgent banners I've seen are about the time to complete the fund drive. Along the lines of: If X% of users paid $Y then the goal would be reached in Z minutes.
If you assume the fund drive exists to help keep the lights on then I think it is natural to treat it as an existential issue for Wikipedia, but that doesn't seem to match the specific language used.
2021/2022 revenue target: $150M, already exceeded by end of quarter 3, weeks before the start of the fundraiser in India, South Africa and South America:
The banner shown in the article has a subtle tone of demise: if you don't donate, Wikipedia itself stops being independent, could not thrive, could not give reliable or independent info. And then the money is primarily spent in things other than Wikipedia. They never state or at least insinuate where the money go.
This sounds like the exact CTA of countless YouTubers asking for Patreon support. No level of coffers or ever increasing support changes their ask. (which to me is ok)
Patreon supporters generally know where their money is going: Straight into the YouTuber's (or whatever) pocket. That's the goal of the contributor and there's generally no particular deception on the YouTuber's part either. I want to give them $5 even if they already have a lot of other $5, because that's the value I'm getting or whatever.
I agree with others that Wikipedia very carefully makes it sound like they've got a sob story where if you don't donate they're going to shut down, so they probably get a lot of donations made with the belief that they're funding Wikipedia, but instead it gets shunted out to something else. Maybe something the donor is OK with, but maybe something not.
Charities seem to do do that sort of thing to raise money, probably because it works and also because the current activities are already funded.
When donations are sought after a disaster the implication is that the money is going to directly help the victims, but the reality is that it will fund other efforts, possibly including helping the victims of a future disaster.
> Wikimedia does way more than "just" Wikipedia, and the majority of the money goes to these other activities.
[Citation needed]
And by citation needed, i mean i think this is a false statement. Unless you count things that help multiple wikimedia sites as not helping wikipedia because it is not just wikipedia. After all, all of these sites run the same software, a bug fix affects all of them pretty equally.
But the banners I've seen have invariably been about the imminent demise of Wikipedia. Not that they got lots of other side projects they want funded.