Revenue doesn’t equal profit but many companies are using multiple schemes to show that they are not profitable. So we also need to check the revenue. A company can just increase the CEO salary to eat up all the profit.

A good example for this is Tommy Wiseau (there are a dozen like him). He is dumb and did a bad movie. But he had the money to keep filming and the crew stayed because they need their paycheck. He thrown a huge amount in aggressive advertising. Years later he is making money without doing anything.

I also think that some celebrities charges their appearance so they get paid when participating because they bring more donations.

Why not? Some companies do have a fraction of Spotify users and have around 100 software engineers. Things do not run by themselves. Also they are in many countries so you need to keep up with legal changes…

I think you can selfhost the sync server.

Add to that being black or LGBT.

Why colleges ask for donations? I am not American.