Dear Guillame, as well as others who may share his position:
I write as a partial rebuttal to a number of points within your response.
"In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollar"
Much of this is premised not on direct spending for our projects, our editors, or even a reasonable growth rate for the endowment. Instead it is an attempt to resolve knowledge equity on a global scale by transferring huge sums of money outside Wikimedia.
This despite the fact that the strategy recommendations have dubious binding power in general, having never undergone a consensus method. But in the case of knowledge equity it's even more dubious, as it's a recommendation that had unanimous stated disagreement on the actual recommendation. The WMF seems to take them as a given, which since they were responsible for the close, would inherently make them INVOLVED.
Beyond that, the first tranche of donations, huge donations, to external projects this year did not notify the broad community of this, did not take on full community feedback as to a) whether we should do this at all, or b) whether these particular efforts were wise/cost-efficient etc.
You say that the fundraising team has done years of A/B testing, but while they do a fantastic job at raising money, it clearly *isn't* set for the lowest level of alarmist needed to raise the necessary sum of money. The necessary sum of money is what's been set as the budget for the year. If you want that budget to be forward-facing, increase the target budget.
Instead we smash past it, which demonstrates highly effective fundraising abilities, but that the dial for acceptable alarmism is way too high.
I am an OTRS/VRT agent, and some of the tidal wave of tickets we get as a result of this phrasing make me consider resigning the position every Nov-December, when the bulk come in.
"denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful"
Not doubt, but you're defining "need" (not, would find beneficial [if you can prove that]) and "we" (not somewhat aligned organisations) without having got Community agreement for a mass expansion of these definitions.
If you genuinely believe that these are needed, then the banners should be reading "we need to get up to $1 billion/year fundraising, with roughly 1/8th to actually maintain our projects, and 7/8 to support a variety of external projects in different countries to encourage knowledge acquisition".
Just because it's effective doesn't mean you're allowed to use alarmist language unless it is 100% accurate in every facet. I have told the state of our finances and the use of money to a number of non-wikipedians, and about 75% cease donating, at least for that fundraising wave. If the language were correct, then I shouldn't be able to convince *anyone*.