Thank you both, that fixed it.

Eta: I can’t see this post either, so hopefully I’m at least notified if someone replies.

Not sure if you can edit, but your description says June 9.

I support this completely; donation may or may not be forthcoming

I ran into the same issue with Lemmy.World. Tried switching to Beehaw.org first (before I learned that they had defederated from some of the bigger instances) and had my “application” rejected. Appears I didn’t provide good enough reasons for why I wanted to join their particular instance. To me, it just shouldn’t be that serious. Tried sh.it just.works and well, it works!