Is there a way to directly donate to support a comic / light novel / animation?
Simple answer is no. Anime are created through production committees. How they come about can vary. The best way to support a commercial work is to purchase the principal media (discs) behind them or the source material (novels, manga). 

The crowd funding, Patreon-type model is not very well-known or accepted in Japan, but they do exist. The most notable recent one is Nekopara. However, these happen fairly infrequently, and typically only happen for smaller or self-published work instead of bigger IPs from established.