yes. to expand, the presence or absence of funding always has political consequences. eg. a world of pure voluntarism is brittle, has little redundancy / defense in depth, and is even more at risk to coercion by large orgs because those engaged in stewardship provide contingent and precarious labor
the idea that patronage is no-strings attached is naive at best. it thoroughly remains a political economy, just one which chooses different tradeoffs. and some are more visible than others