I don't ask for money for myself as I do this for fun and in the traditional (and ever-decreasing) spirit of sharing. Instead, I say if people want to contribute in some way then perhaps make a donation to charity or to do a good deed for someone in need... so I've no way of ever knowing if this happens. I suspect rarely or never.
The monetisation of modding is something I'm quite uncomfortable with as it makes me question the modder's motivation. Are they doing it for fun and community spirit, or to make money? Or a bit of both? It seems a lot of mods can't be released these days without the collection tin being rattled, and in a lot of cases even rips and conversions are hidden behind paywalls. Having a patreon almost seems to be a prerequisite now, like some sort of official stamp of authority.
Thankfully here at RD the community spirit is still strong but on Discord and (ugh!) Facebook the moneygrabbing culture is quite strong in places. But even here the PayPal donation button is often front and centre and the first thing you see... but at least donating to show appreciation after the fact is optional whereas paywalls require payment up front, sight unseen.
I think you're inherently entering a dichotomy where you're throwing away the time and effort a modder put towards a resource down the bin simply because they're politely asking that if you enjoy their work you could buy them a beer or whatever.
Think about it, to make a proper car from scratch in an accurate manner, just the 3D alone would take roughly half a year for an experienced modeller with tons of reference
Physics assuming you have good sources would take months as well
Sound can easily take several months
and so this becomes a collaboration where maybe some of these people want to get paid because they're committing huge chunks of their spare time to a project, and it's hard to do so without some sort of light at the end of the tunnel, not everyone's CV needs more expansion and not everyone needs more experience, experience and knowledge can't pay rent month to month
Seems to me you're stuck in a very 90s mentality where all modding should just be done for free and the hobby should stay strictly towards those invested in it for the sake of enjoying it rather than maybe getting something out of it.
The actions of those modders that don't demand anything in exchange for their work, are definitely something I'd love to keep encouraging, but not at the expense of making people who spent 1.5 years on a mod feeling bad about plugging a collective paypal link or whatever.
The much bigger issue is unethical and immoral business models for modders, I think.