I mean, they aren't. The amount they are giving to this Information Equity Fund is a small portion of the endownment they are building up; plus it's not "random", it's something they decided was mission-aligned. You disagree with that assessment, but it's not "random"; they've always given other grants too, and continue to, I'm not sure if you and others are opposed to _all_ granting from wikimedia or just disagree with this particular choice. You are allowed to disagree with this particular choice without being required to object to all granting of course -- I feel like people are feeling compelled to argue that wikimedia ought to never give any grants to any third parties, when they really just don't like this particualr choice. There is no reason for such a compulsion. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start
But meanwhile... fund-raising to build up a "rainy day" fund of 5x your annual operating budget is... just not something non-profits generally do. It's certainly not standard practice. Of course most organizations wouldn't be able to pull that off even if they decided it's a goal, most orgs don't have the capacity to fund-raise an extra 50%+ beyond their operating budget "just in case". I think it's debatable whether it's a wise or responsible use of funds or a good goal.
There are already many comments saying this but the main objection is asking for money to do one thing and then doing something else with it. A secondary objection, for many, is the nature of the other thing they are doing with the money.
In the context of this particular thread, GP advocated for funding of organizational resilience. While this also isn't what Wikimedia was asking for money for, it would probably be less objectionable to those who disagree with the ultimate destination of their donation.
And yet nobody seems fired up about the other grants wikimedia gives, and has for years, while some are insisting it's just the prinicple of wikimedia giving any grants that they object to, what they are actually focusing on, and their lack of concern with even mentioning those other grants while getting really fired up about this "equity" fund (a topic very likely to fire people up), makes me think that's what's going on must be primarily not secondarily about this particular thing.
It seems silly to argue about whether the people who are making an argument are misrepresenting what their concerns are instead of just believing what they say. But it sounds like you are ready to make some sort of conspiratorial assertion for why that could be.
But meanwhile... fund-raising to build up a "rainy day" fund of 5x your annual operating budget is... just not something non-profits generally do. It's certainly not standard practice. Of course most organizations wouldn't be able to pull that off even if they decided it's a goal, most orgs don't have the capacity to fund-raise an extra 50%+ beyond their operating budget "just in case". I think it's debatable whether it's a wise or responsible use of funds or a good goal.
So I disagree with both of y'all!