If the money only comes from donations, and the donations start drying up, every area of the budget gets impacted, including salaries. The WMF could not have foreseen the current campaign making much less than expected.
The majority is spent on wages, as evidenced by the consolidated statement of activities of the WMF. I severely doubt that $88 million worth of people is required to run Wikipedia, nor that Wikipedia gets much benefit from things like “Awards and grants” (to the Tides foundation), “Travel and conferences”, or “special event expenses”.
In fact, only 2.7 million dollars is spent on the actual hosting, you know, that thing that is absolutely drop dead required to run a site. That is 1.8% and is split amongst the various sites other than English Wikipedia. That sounds a hell of a lot like “abysmally small” to me.
And, as I said, it wouldn’t be a part of a currently running donation campaign. Maybe it would affect budgets years from now, but the foundation is not running at the equivalent of paycheck to paycheck. The current donation drive would in no way shape or form impact the current projects that are being run, and if they are, then that’s indicative of massive mismanagement more than anything.
So please, show me exactly where I’m wrong, with explicit sources, instead of claiming I’m uninformed and pointing me to the most generic of pages on this.
Ops people cost money, and MediaWiki is a flaming garbage heap to operate (with utmost respect to those who tirelessly work on it). Developers who work on editor tools also cost money, as do lawyers for major jurisdictions in which Wikipedia operates (hint: there are many). Grants and appointments provide essential depth to Wikipedia; what's a history article without historians helping out?
Re paycheck to paycheck: look, I'm not a finance guy, but I have it on good authority (sorry, no links) that the current campaign's performance is having _some_ effect; you're welcome to tell them it shouldn't, I guess?
Sure, there's some stupid money (and the recent upheaval is helping with that), but there's a lot of non-stupid money, and it's not like they're epically mismanaging the money.
Apologies for the lack of sources, but everything relevant is public, I think, and you've found the budget already.
MediaWiki is open source. Developers getting paid is great, but things would still eventually go in even without them getting paid.
Ops might be essential, but it’s not $88 million dollars. Nowhere near.
It’s your responsibility to back up your claims with links. Telling someone it’s all public and to trust you and your good authority is, frankly, not enough.
"Abysmally small" is a bizarre and uninformed characterization. Please read anything written on the topic; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising/2022_ban... is a fine starting point.