Let me lay out a little on how governance works inside organisations and companies:

Fiduciary duty is just one of the many obligations an office holder has and is not and should not over ride all others. The Milton Friedman school of extreme capitalism that espouses prioritising shareholder returns above all other factors has a large part to play in why public capital markets today are so utterly f’d up

Okay, so what are the priorities then?

Mission
Why does the organisation exist and what is it here for; OpenSats, Brink and HRF all have clear mission statements. Mission is first and foremost

People
Attract and nurture the people aligned to your mission who have the skills and talents you don’t, because they are the ones *who help deliver on the mission *

Profit
In a for-profit venture like a company, you need to get to cash flow positive in order to become master or mistress of your own destiny - as a founder you therefore carefully choose investors who buy into your mission

Ten31, EgoDeath, Recursive, Stillmark,  Lightning Ventures etc etc are all Bitcoin only as a core part of their mission and consequently align investment with founders and projects those mission aligns with theirs

Further, it’s also why investors (not just VC forms) want to meet founders and understand what makes them tick; early stage investing is about investing in the people who, just maybe, can bring the vision to life. In the process of doing that they may generate a return for the investors .. but it’s clearly:
1. Mission
2. People
3. Profit

A key point to make in all of these types of organisations is that choices are made carefully because demands for funding (grant requests or startup funding) always vastly outstrips available supply .. and these decisions are not made by individuals but collaboratively

If you’ve primarily worked alone you won’t perhaps appreciate the value that a breadth of perspectives brings to hard decisions. I’ve looked at the board makeup of OpenSats and Ten31 and EgoDeath and i don’t see a single individual in there who’s a “yes” person; smart, brutally objective and unafraid to be combative with pretty much anyone

As you say though - there are other ways to try and the open source funding space would benefit you from creating those too .. get to it 💪