Why does it even matter? Miners choose what changes they will back up by mining it, and community chooses if they support any fork. So what kind of changes are you afraid of exactly and why and how could anyone enforce them to us?
If radical changes are coming, we see them coming from mile away and can just not accept them. Also funders are not stupid. They don't expect bitcoin to be somehow more centralized or controlled by their funding.
Some funders absolutely want to control the direction of Bitcoin. To start, Banks and governments will fight to prevent it's use as a currency or they will co-opt it to more completely control the movement of money.
This community should do everything it can to develop Bitcoin for it's intended purpose - a "purely peer-to-peer electronic form of cash".
A diverse group of node operators, or better yet, everyone who uses Bitcoin as "electronic cash" should have a say in how Bitcoin is changed.
The internet is an edge network and Bitcoin was designed to take advantage of that by pushing the decisions out to the nodes. In a perfect world most people who transact in Bitcoin would have their own node and have a say in its development.
If you want the people and institutions who lots of money to dictate Bitcoin's future then by all means allow the core developers accept donations from them.