Apache Software Foundation accepts individual donations of any amount that are tax-deductible: https://apache.org/foundation/individual-supporters

Outreachy is another excellent 501c3 that provides paid internships for open source: https://www.outreachy.org/sponsor/donate/

Let's Encrypt provides free TLS certificates to anyone: https://letsencrypt.org/donate/

You can find a wide range of OSS projects on OpenCollective: https://opencollective.com/search?q=&tag=open+source

Maintainers, if you had to do it all over again which would you choose and why?

This survey (1) shows that the majority of orgs develop their own operators, perhaps related to what you say here. Do you think industry standards for operators would move things in the right direction?

(1) https://dok.community/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/DoK_Report_...

Another great resources is https://operatorhub.io/ which lets you search by certain parameters; as well as https://dok.community/landscape/.