I am regularly in a position to control how funds for tech projects are spent. For example, choosing cloud infrastructure and such. I want to direct as much funding as possible to FOSS or FOSS friendly projects. The amount of money that I have control over in the company is way more than I could ever donate.
For example, I want to fund Linux kernel development, Postgres, language maintainers, etc.
I can’t convince companies to donate outright, but I could get them to buy a license or choose a different cloud provider or database provider.
I’m looking for ways to get money to people making a difference through legitimate channels that I can use to push internally.
EDIT:
Summary of my favorite options so far,


If you’re on GitHub, there is an organisation option for sponsoring users. In our company, we decided to sponsor free tools that we rely on with a small monthly amount. It’s part of the regular (and frankly intransparent) GitHub invoice and within our budget.