This is a common confusion. The scalenpm crowdfunding was done by the good folks who ran the npm servers for free (mostly nodejitsu) up until the recent switchover to the new infrastructure with Npm, Inc.

You can still use the nodejitsu registry for free if you'd like[1]. They arent likely to need as much scaling anymore, but there's still a big cost to running those servers. I don't think there was any foul play when it comes to the scalenpm money as I'm fairly sure they were not aware of the intent for Npm, Inc to take over default hosting.

tl;dr the money did not go to the same people, and the people who crowd funded thought they'd still be hosting npm going forward at the time.

[1] http://blog.nodejitsu.com/simple-hosted-private-npm-and-regi...