To me, they’re a lot like supporting a YouTube creator you like on a funding website like Ko-Fi (or that other one that starts with a P), you don’t pay to watch their content, you pay because you enjoy their content and want them to get better at it, and you get some freebies in return that never feel necessary for those who can’t afford or don’t want to spend money on them.
It’s also why on Bandcamp, you can choose to pay more than the asking price for a song/album if you really feel like it. You never need to, but you can because you care about the artist’s work.
FOSS can really benefit a lot from voluntary donations, especially since making software (especially good software) and maintaining it costs money. This is especially the case for a website that relies on maintaining servers and instances.
Canada is already a state… a SOVEREIGN state.