I don't think it's analogous to gittip where someone is attempting to send funds to a particular repository or organization, and, I assume, you don't know the status of your funds.
When subscribing to StackAid, you indicate that you'd like to support your dependencies. It's hopefully clear that their dependencies have to participate to receive their allocation. We're also upfront that not all OSS projects are interested or currently have a relationship with StackAid. As a result, allocation amongst dependencies will shift depending on the OSS project interested in participating, and that's an important feature that sets it apart from other funding models.
All of that said, we've tried to be clear in the messaging and setting expectations. We're very much open to feedback to improve what we communicate.
I absolutely love A, B, C; they're critical to my project, the maintainers put pour their own time and effort in, and I want to make sure they get my support. Dep D is pretty good and I wouldn't mind throwing a bit their way too. E is some wrapper lib (or maybe a company-backed package) that I don't care to support monetarily.
Since I want to support 60-80% of my deps, something like StackAid sounds attractive; I don't have to set up and maintain individual (potentially recurring) donations to each. I set up $100/mo to be distributed, feel good about doing my part, and go back to work.
Turns out, only E is collecting their StackAid, for whatever reason. My $100/mo is all going to them. Nothing is going to any of the others, let alone the packages I definitely wanted to support in the first place. I think I've donated, so I don't think to seek projects' alternative donation channels to get the money into their pockets, so they don't see a dime.
The only solution is to go through all of my dependencies to see which ones are actively using StackAid and decide if it's a sufficient set before donating through them.
It seems very unlikely, in the long run, that people/projects that need it would leave reliable income on the table. Maybe this problem exists until people know what stackaid is, but I have a hard time believing this is an issue with the model, generally.
When subscribing to StackAid, you indicate that you'd like to support your dependencies. It's hopefully clear that their dependencies have to participate to receive their allocation. We're also upfront that not all OSS projects are interested or currently have a relationship with StackAid. As a result, allocation amongst dependencies will shift depending on the OSS project interested in participating, and that's an important feature that sets it apart from other funding models.
All of that said, we've tried to be clear in the messaging and setting expectations. We're very much open to feedback to improve what we communicate.