I will not be donating for the foreseeable future, because Gnome has repeatedly shown contempt towards their software's userbase by ignoring their feedback and releasing software that has poor quality and usability.
Consider that different users have different preferences. I have tried almost all of the DE/WMs and have found gnome to be the most stable/best looking/best defaults.
These three points are contrary to every other desktop environment there is, and it's confusing the hell out of people. I really wish GNOME the best and i really like some aspects of it (it's pretty and it's well-integrated) but over the years they've dumped core features like this, and made the overall experience super slow. If you've tried to run GNOME on second-hand hardware with HDD (not SSD) you know what i'm talking about.
Gnome is not for you; good! Because there's lot's of choice: POPos, Mint, KDE, LXDE, iwm, and so forth and so on. This is what OSS en Linux is all about: choices! freedom!
Why not use one of the alternatives that fits your requirements better and praise that alternative?
But those may solve grandparents' issue with "ignoring their feedback" or "poor quality and usability.".