Is there a realistic way a person having an old computer and cheap (but not free) electricity can actually mine monero equal to some amount which can be used to donate to good service providers or purchase services?
I keep hearing about low reward to effort ration, but can I get a respectable amount in let’s say a year without having to deanonymize myself by going to a Centralised exchange?
Lookup RandomX cpu benchmarks. That will tell you roughly what the CPU is capable of doing as far as hash rate, and then you can stick that into a calculator such as on the nano.p2pool.observer site under share calculator.