You cannot convince companies who are actively looking for alternatives to
PHP due to the lack of core, modern features like async, generics to invest
in PHP, so that maybe (more likely no than yes, as proven) in the future
internals may accept RFCs (financed by the PHPF or not), bringing async and
generics into PHP.
You might be mixing things a little bit here: companies that use PHP must be convinced that donating to the PHPF will help them. But these can be any kinds of companies. Not all of them are actively looking for alternatives to PHP. I don’t know how you work for, nor your past experience, but I know for a fact that there are lots of companies that are actually very happy of the state of PHP still being maintained, compared to actually unmaintained tech that sometimes is younger than PHP. All these are different subjects.
The point is: the PHPF needs funding, from anyone, because without it, PHP will die, and the millions of apps worldwide that use PHP will be at risk, and their users with it, which would cause a lot of unimaginable problems.
You first need to have a working, proven track record of leadership capable
of merging new features into PHP.
What you call a “leadership capable of merging new features into PHP” is the actual work of the core maintainers, the PHP release managers, and the volunteering community that accepts to read the internals, RFCs, PRs, etc.
This is the current way of doing things, and I don’t understand why you make this comment about “You first need to (…)” while it’s already the case right now, and has been for many years now.
Internals currently has exactly the opposite track record: this has to
change in order for both PHP and the PHPF to succeed.
Opposite to what? Merging new features to PHP? If you go to the PHP: Appendices page on php.net, there are a lot of “Migrating from (…)” pages that contain all the new features merged in PHP in each minor and major versions. Reading them for any version shows that there are a lot of new features on all new PHP versions, and actually way more than what is presented in the “What’s new in PHP X.Y?” blog posts that we see popping out on the web every year.
Your comment is just false, internals do have a track record of working successfully in adding new features to PHP.