They pay fair wages because they have enough scale where pestering for donations once a year is enough to justify their costs and then some. And even then, this forum is very famous for shitting on such a large scale not-for-profits, with many justifying their decision not to donate by seeing how much money the non-profit already has in their pockets. The only reason we even know how much money the non-profit has in its pockets is because non-profits are legally obliged to publicly disclose that, while for-profits are not (until they go public of course).

My point being that it's a mountain to climb, and just because those at the top have already climbed it doesn't translate into everyone being able to climb it. It takes a whole lot of effort and probably some public grants, but getting those public grants is a whole different skill set than actually building the thing. And you can only get a public grant after you've already created something useful, so your idea of a non-profit quickly turns into an inescable hole in your pocket that you're desperately trying to fill for at least a year or two.

This is why while our lists might vary, every single one of us can only name like 5, maybe 10 non-profits that have "made it" (however we define that success).

All that said, go set up a reocurring $2/month donation to your favourite non-profit right now. Whether you choose Wikimedia or something else, I'm sure it's well worth 10% of a monthly subscription you're already paying for an LLM or whatever. Unlike your for-profit subscriptions, if the money becomes tight you can always cancel these without losing anything.