Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (https://osuosl.org/) offers managed and unmanaged hosting to open source projects. They even have IBM Z and POWER10 hosting if you're into that sort of thing.
You are making all of this sound way more definitive than the ticket. The donation money approach is the personal opinion of the sysadmin. The OSUOSL is brought up, some explanations are added that make it more attractive and remove some doubts, and beyond that it's waiting for the board to decide what's next.