guidance on funding site to fund members is as follows:
(1) don't leave direction open.
(2) enroll those who are willing to fight against eternal september.
(3) disperse based on amount collected threshold schedule.
(4) petition funding (newsletters etc) based on date schedule.
(5) disperse only if valids found.
openness can work. cohesion must be owned. recipients are asked only that they win.
Spoiler
explained, this means:
do: (1,2): donationcoder must own donationcoder funds. copyright/left/dontcare is separate from this. policy must be owned; ownership of code and spirit is the member's job in this regard, it is not the same thing as funds. funds must belong to donationcoder to ensure exchange for funds is productive.
do: (3,4,5): funding is best petitioned on a date schedule, collected until it reaches an amount-threshold schedule, and the only dispersed if it finds validity to exchange for. in this way, wealth (actual code and name) is promoted, and funding is guarded against the worst-case hamster wheels.
do not do: strangeness, over-permissiveness, let-the-users-do-whatever, and gofundme-like activity. this is not advised. this does not end well, and leaves a bad taste. (it also leads to people walking in, setting up camp in your house, and taking your house). such thinking is itself a 'hippie-like' method that only works inside of high-cohesion/high-shared-values companies. it has, is, and will always be subverted. (in less polite terms: cucked, parasitic-like exploitation, etc). this is an unfortunate but omnipresent concern, which is necessary for the long-term. however, if efficient enough, and with other members being successful enough (and agreeing to support it), the short-term limited openness can be afforded to a degree. and while many feel it should, it is my experience that only successful owners who have a real non-monetary non-ad/news/publishing stake will truly sense when this 'do-not-do' line is crossed.
essentially, you're looking at funding direction by members to coders (exists already, member directed), funding direction by site to coders (new program, donationcoder directed), and lastly funding direction to site (member directed to house costs). it may look complicated, but it's just accounting. keep it simple. outline a process, draw a flow-chart to clear up what you're doing, and you're good to go. as such, it's just about choosing what level of overhead work/complexity/granularity you want. at the end of the process, funds that go un-awarded for lack of opportunities are best left alone, or sent back to the house costs. and finally, never forget, of course, that might exists first, and exchanging it for funding is just that: an exchange. funding is not source, it is merchant, it is just a tool.