Donate buttons don’t work. They are asking for money from other developers. Imagine 100 developers in a room and each one takes out their purse or wallet and hands a dollar to the left. It’s not scalable, and it feels like begging.
Code Sponsor took the approach that scalable funding should come through marketing budgets, not charity. Companies pay developers to place a non-obtrusive, relevant and ethical banner on their repo or website and the developer gets paid on a per-click basis. The larger the repo, the more clicks they get. It is self-normalizing.
I believe there is a chance of making it happen through donations like Patreon did for creatives. A Patreon for OSS would be a good pivot, don't you think?
Patreon already does OSS if the creator wants to list there, but there's also https://opencollective.com that has gained traction with many top projects for official funding.
Code Sponsor took the approach that scalable funding should come through marketing budgets, not charity. Companies pay developers to place a non-obtrusive, relevant and ethical banner on their repo or website and the developer gets paid on a per-click basis. The larger the repo, the more clicks they get. It is self-normalizing.