This is not exactly the case. When I mentioned: ‘all volunteer work’, I was thinking more about all the people who contribute to this community, especially @aschrijver and the @fep.hosts. I am paid for mentoring free software projects, so I consider this part of my work — I’ve been doing that for two decades, only the last five years have been paid (and not much), because I think this is required and fills a void in the free software world, where technique is often (mis-)considered as only code. When Lawrence Lessig stated that “code is law”, he certainly did not imply that only code is required to make a dent in the power structures of the world, that both (some) lawyers and (some) hackers are trying to address.
What we’ve been trying to do here is to gather a solid team of people interested in seeing the Fediverse thrive on the terms of the grassroots that made it be, without much backing, financial or otherwise. We made a lot of progress providing grants for the ActivityPub developers, but these are not structural, and are meant for code only, not for advancing the standards community. I don’t have the figures at hand, but I guess that members of this community have been receiving hundreds of thousands of euros in grants since the beginning. Except this money went to software development, not community building. The main goal of the RIPE NCC proposal was to funnel some money to @aschrijver in priority because of his heavy involvement, one could say commitment — per the definition of a hamburger, where the chicken is involved and the cow is committed. That is to say, the ActivityPub brand, because of the funding structures available to us, goes through software development, and what’s needed is funding for community building. Unless I missed something, there is no ongoing NGI0 grant suited for community building and the permanence of this community, that has been living on contributions by @cwebber for the domain, @rhiaro for the remote backups, and petites singularités (represented here by @natacha and @how) for the hosting costs.
Actually, we both did, but we recovered. 
My understanding is that we should thrive to create a European cooperative society for all the developers, community managers, and ActivityPub promoters around from the grassroots. But this process requires a common understanding and trust in the process and in each other, that we’re slowly building, and barely achieving. Last “event” that made me a bit sad was the need to start over with the @well-being team because all of its members became unresponsive to onboard a new person.
I guess we’re taking the problem by different ends: I’d like the community to strengthen and take charge in order to create a representative structure, while you’re envisioning creating a structure and figuring the community involvement later.