They place banner ads implying that donations are needed 'to keep Wikipedia thriving for years' which is a weird way to express that they annually collect over 50x their cost of maintenance in donations. And most of what they do collect gets distributed to 1) their employees (employees of the foundation are mostly not directly involved with running Wikipedia, which is edited and maintained by volunteers) and 2) other organizations that have absolutely nothing to do with the operation of the site.
They place banner ads implying that donations are needed 'to keep Wikipedia thriving for years' which is a weird way to express that they annually collect over 50x their cost of maintenance in donations. And most of what they do collect gets distributed to 1) their employees (employees of the foundation are mostly not directly involved with running Wikipedia, which is edited and maintained by volunteers) and 2) other organizations that have absolutely nothing to do with the operation of the site.