Referrals are a tricky area to decipher a moderation policy on.
On one hand, everyone wins. The referer and the person being referred. It puts money in AAM users pockets.
On the other hand, referrals can pollute discussions, feel like advertising and potentially might compromise the independent advise that this site offers.
Boards.ie segregate referrals into a seperate forum. Reditt somewhat does something similar. Here we obviously started putting referrals into a dedicated thread only to stop it interfering with other discussions.
Regarding certain people currently getting all the referrals - not good but difficult to control.
Regarding giving the money to charity or Brendan or certain users - nice suggestions but again difficult to control. And it might create a perception that it interferes with independent advise.
I don't know. I don't have a clear view on this. I think either referrals or allowed or not. Going beyond this and regulating who gets referrals is a lot of work and challenging.