With the aggressive push for donations, wikipedia seems desperate to keep floating. Have you been seeing the Donate Banners every time you visit wikipedia ?
The foundation has more and more money each year and spends quite a bit on things that are not critical to running wikipedia, so I have no reason to believe that Wikipedia is at financial risk.
They have $90M in savings. They already met their donation goal, half way through the donation period. They spend $2M a year on keeping the site running. They are fine.
You must be new to Wikipedia, if your never seen Jimmy Whales's begging bowl before now
They do this every december. If you watched pbs in the us you would think the same thing.
I wish more people would donate
I usually give $10 per year. Not because I think they need it, but because they are an important institution. I'm concerned that the number of contributors is going down though.
Taking how often they are doing edit-a-thons into account, it's possible that some of your money goes into recruiting new contributors. (WMF also has a scholarship for known-good contributors to attend these conferences.)