but what if you are like me and you can't donate........
Then you aren't getting anything. Donations are an incentive system. If you could acquire donation rewards a different way, donations would dwindle and the server wouldn't be able to sustain itself. In-game currency will, in all likelihood, not be extended past basic economic functions such as trading of items and services between players and the market.
I know about the voting awards as well but I'm in a different time zone
That has no bearing on your ability to vote every 12 hours on xtremetop, and every 24 hours on the other sites.