[mrweasel]

That is an issue. There is a number of projects that the Wikimedia Foundation want to do or be involved in, because they align with the mission. These all costs money, but are frequently of little interest to anyone not involved directly. There is absolutely no way to fund these, which leads to the foundation pushing for donations via Wikipedia, because that's the only thing enough people actually care about.

For the most part Wikimedia could kill off everything but English, Germany, French, Russian and a handful of other wikis and most people would be just as happy.

Wikimedia absolutely suck at telling people why they need the money. Technically the budget is completely transparent, it's just communicated extremely poorly.