This was fascinating for me to hear. And, as others have said, it is very different in our culture in the U.S. This sort of thing is very common and is not at all a sign of weaknesses or problems. Sometimes you will see banners or requests like this if an organization is having trouble, but usually then the tone will be more desperate, i.e. they will be open about having to cut services if they don’t get funding. Plenty of organizations do it in a more forward-looking way.
And I personally have no issue with iNaturalist merely asking for money (although I do have a few quibbles about the organization and I wish they, and other non-profits, were more transparent in how they funds are used and this were linked to in the request for money.)
I have supported other sites such as Wikipedia, and I also subscribe to for-profit services such as Spotify and Clozemaster.
Interestingly though, I do think many non-profits in the U.S. do things that I find troubling or disturbing, when asking for money. For example, I gave once to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (because I use eBird and wanted to support them; I had seen a notice on eBird’s site itself) and I was troubled by the volume of paper mail I received. I donated a small amount, I think about $25, and in a year, I received a calendar, a “gift” of address labels (which I didn’t need, because they were not the only non-profit sending me address labels), and I received multiple mailings. I never consented to receive any of these things, and I did not want to receive any of them, because I would rather all of my money go to the cause. I would have preferred only a simple text or email thank-you and reminder to give again if I had signed up to give regularly. I also repeatedly called and emailed people at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology requesting to be removed from their paper mailing list.
Yet it went on and on. There was no clear or easy way to subscribe presented in the mailings either, but I tried contacting them through different channels. I never gave again, but two years later, I was still receiving mailings. I finally got very irate and I started looking up and calling and emailing more people within the organization. Finally someone got me taken off the list, and I haven’t heard from them since. But the whole thing made me incredibly sad. I gave a small amount because I cared about the organization and wanted to support their mission, and instead I found the amount of postage and printing alone that was sent to my home ate up much of that donation, not to mention it created extra work for me and for society to sort and dispose of that wasteful mail. And the poor handling of the situation, my wasted effort trying to unsubscribe from something I never wanted to be subscribed to in the first place, soured me on the organization and soured me on giving to non-profits across the board, because the organization had been one that I trusted so much to begin with, and one that was committed to an environmental cause. Like, the way it was handled was just unconscionable to me. I was left with feelings of betrayal and an inability to trust them as a competently-run organization.
So yes, non-profits, including “good” ones, i.e. ones like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology which are doing fantastic work and are widely regarded and respected, can do some incredibly aggressive, incompetent, and wasteful things in the course of fundraising.
But…these banners are not one of them! =) At least not as far as I am concerned.