KDE developers are not paid by KDE itself; KDE is not an employer. Most developers are unpaid volunteers, and the ones who are paid receive salaries from external companies, not from KDE. ev.kde.org

KDE contributors can be full‑time employees of companies that depend on KDE or Plasma, like Valve (that extorts 30% of sales from actual developers), Pine64, Tuxedo, and Slimbook (sell hardware with KDE Plasma). Canonical (Kubuntu -Corporate Linux) and SUSE (another ‘corporate’ Linux).

It’s reminiscent of Luke Smith asking for money for introducing you to some FOSS garbage.

KDE has produced polished products in the past, but they’ll scrap them to start over because their priority is features and innovations. You’d basically be supporting a company that will perpetually churn out alpha / beta garbage.