This is the key - and it's the failure mode of all political/charity begging across decades and decades.
"We want money to do the things we want to do" doesn't get as much reaction as "holy shit the servers will die tomorrow because you fucks don't ever donate and just suck the sweet sweet wikitit of knowledge".
It's obviously manipulative and at some point it crosses a boundary into immoral. You could add a "My donation is necessary to keep the Wikipedia servers online next year" yes/no question to the donation page and I bet you'd get something high like 80%+ picking yes, because of how the appeals are written.
