I had no idea it accepted donations, if not for this post I would have no idea where to do it. And still not sure how it works and where the money is for exactly. Is it like sponsoring servers for 1 particular instance?
The links in this post are for funding the two developers who work full time on Lemmy, the software.
The instances are sponsored separately via their own contribution links. E.g. look at the sidebar on lemmy.world and you're probably gonna find them.
For the system to work we need to fund both the software development and the instances. Currently the software development funding is further behind as it still doesn't cover two modest salaries. On the other hand I think lemmy.world is sustainably funded. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
I think it's enough for the big picture, and it enables me to make several follow up questions such as
I had no idea this was in the hands of 2 people. Do they really make a living primarily on crowd sourced funds? Exciting and scary for the future of software in general!
There's a bit more detail here. I think I saw something about NLnet funding getting renewed recently. There are other open source contributors too, but these two are the main Lemmy team.