Red Hat would rather use that ~$80,000 to hire another kernel developer, the member ranks are just about political clout.
Because Red Hat never does anything that is about political clout?
No, they aren't donating more to the Linux foundation for political clout.
Or 10,000 man-hours worth of systemd shills (just kidding, they do it for free)
Red Hat spends plenty of money on political clout, just not this specific clout
Why would they donate money for corporate sponsorship ranks if they're already donating so much code? Honest question. I thought they were the second largest contributor to the kernel code base after Intel.