appears to receive stable funding from the FSF
No, about ten underemployed or semi-retired graybeards on the emacs.devel mailing list burn most of their waking hours futzing with emacs. That's not an exaggeration. They receive no remuneration.
The emacs devel mailing list is way more active than that.. although you do see some regulars there for sure.
That's sad. Is there a way I can fund them without going through FSF? I tried looking into it before but it seemed like FSF was the only alternative, so I assumed it was well-managed.