While I don't have any solutions for you I do have enormous amounts of respect and gratitude.
Downvotes: I don't personally miss them because I rarely used them. Either a comment/post is egregious that it warrants a report or reply, else it's worth ignoring. If the Content Creators prefer no downvotes because they're discouraging, then that's fine by me, more content is more better and the report button exists for "rule breaking" and "off topic".
Donations: No solutions only sympathy here. I hope you figure something out, I'm not sure the promise of a donation if/when you do helps or hurts right now. You're right that "sketch" is a barrier to entry for donations, but I can't donate the kind of money that my donation is worth chasing anyways.
LemmyNSFW became my main by accident, but it remains my main because I haven't found an instance I like better. The way you conduct yourself through challenges such as defederation, the Blahaj (sp) conversations, preemptive defence agains Meta... Honestly, it's close to faultless and looking at other instances it's hard to leave. Thank you and much love.
When a company' website doesn't work on Firefox I don't get angry at Firefox, I just don't use the site. When a company makes their cookie popups are a pain in the ass I don't get angry at the EU, I get angry at the company that made the popup. I use Firefox as a Canary that dies when a website is a piece of shit.
Maybe it's a win-win, I don't have to deal with Apple's bullshit and Apple doesn't have to waste resources on me, for me to block all their shady shit.