Apache Software Foundation does not pay any software developers -- so its a very different model than what you are proposing.

If people like this are still falling through the cracks, clearly there aren't enough.

The problem with such organizations is their donations only go to affiliated projects. Mozilla donates to mozilla projecs, apache donates to apache projects, fsf donates to fsf projects and so on.

Relying donations from occasional news cannot be healthy for the project. I imagine that during the next week the project will be able to amass a significant amount of donations but whenever this article is forgotten, the cash inflow will trickle.

I kinda wish that such organizations could make patreon accounts. Or maybe a non-profit service with the same idea. The point is, it's hard to keep track of all the projects that need money and to manage such donations without blowing your budget.

I can think of a few projects that I rely on a daily basis: firefox, xfce, fsf, freedesktop, python, debian, openbsd, transmission torrent, the gnome foundation, vlc, and there is probably a lot more that I can't remember right now.