I donate to quite a few people close to me, as many are much worse off than my family and I are. I help them with projects, car repairs, house repairs, and dinners when things are tight. They never ask, I offer, and they'll accept maybe 50% of the time. I keep good company.
I've also put a few hundred dollars this one election cycle towards a few select political campaigns I care about, especially now that I'm in a good paying job. Not something i've done before, and it's not much but enough to at least feel like I'm helping get rid of fascists.
Your first mistake was discussing on .ml.
Ml is a shithole. But the flexibility and true freedom of the Fediverse is you are free to not use instances with shitty tankie admins and mods. You can move your account and community subscriptions over to any other instance.