Patronage

people donating money to support someone's non-revenue-producing activities

the Medici family was known for this

• http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/aa3/cng207.shtml
• http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/Medici_patronage.html

Patreon is based on this, though PayPal and Amazon are sometimes used for it