> The Wikimedia Foundation relies on public contributions and grants to fund its mission.
The wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation) tagline suggests the underlying truth. Wikipedia gets ~half of its revenue from the investment-based endowment managed by the Tides Foundation. The leveraged capital is largely at the charity of large organizations (like google, amazon, etc) who have donated to that endowment over time, plus the remnants of their initial investment portfolio afaict.
Wikipedia would inevitably scale back in size without the continued charity of individuals and organizations around the world.
Being able to toss up a banner requesting donations on the 10th most visited website in the world is extremely valuable.
The Wikimedia foundation brought in US$104.5 million (2018) and only spent US$81.4 million (2018) even as their funding many projects independent from Wikipedia.
