I'm still happy to let them do it simply because of the love I have for all their work on Wikipedia. They can spend my money on crazy if they want, as long as it makes the right people happy.
The fact that the (essentially) negative article about severance payments exists on Wikipedia itself is at least a good sign that they're not trying to hide what other nonprofits would gladly want to sweep under the rug.
It’s Kars4Kids levels of charitable fraud.
The Foundation "does not write or curate any of the content found on the projects", as they are happy to tell you themselves here:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/10/05/a-victory-for-free-kno...
Even most of the emails sent to the Wikimedia Foundation are answered by unpaid volunteers, the Volunteer Response Team:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Volunteer_Response_T...
Sorry to sound harsh, but you are laboring under a misconception and spreading it.
What Wikimedia have done is create a platform and mission and steered that mission to produce a culture that has bred the unpaid editors and kept them on-mission and stopped too many of them going rogue. That platform steering is not to be underestimated. Too many sites with user-generated content descend into insanity within a short amount of time.
To what extent do you think it is the Foundation that keeps this culture and mindset going these days? And does more money and higher pay help them to do so?
I would say the culture you mention was bred in very early days of Wikipedia. Editor activity peaked in 2007, when the annual budget was ~$2m. The prior year was <$800k.
I'm throwing my money at the screen right now.