The Mozilla Foundation does lots of "spreading awareness" but does not contribute to Firefox development.
That is the most vexing part. I want to donate for Firefox development. Not marketing, not side projects, let me just fund the devs. But no, that is not possible.
Blender is a huge success story relying on sponsors and donations, Wikipedia is swimming in money but no we can't just have a free browser.
No we need to have a Mozilla Corporation that lives on Google money for being the controlled opposition i.e. technically avoiding monopoly situation thing. After all CEOs can't get rich on donations, can they?
Ironically Wikimedia is also throwing money around to side projects, outreach, etc. But luckily for them their products are essentially run by volunteers.
For someone not in the loop, can you explain the difference between the two orgs and maybe even explain what each org uses the money for?
The Foundation owns the trademarks, and mostly does evangelism. The (subsiduary) Corporation actually develops the browser (and accepts a bunch of revenue from Google for Search placement)
The Mozilla Foundation has received around USD ~26 million in 2023 in donation from the Mozilla Corporation (~70%) and other sources (~30%).