I want to set up a long-lived lightning channel to accept bitcoin donations. The plan was to open a channel with a capacity of 2.5 mBTC (currently valued around ~100$), "reverse submarine swap" or "loop-out" the initial funds, then loop out the donations once the channel is saturated and in need of additional inbound liquidity.
I have already acquired the 3mBTC needed to cover the fees and reserves associated with opening a lightning channel. Now I'm having difficulty finding a well-connected peer with whom to open my channel. The peers I found either offer no commitment towards availability or keeping the channel open, require a large amount of bitcoin to be committed, or both. This lead me to conclude that I have misunderstood how lighting is meant to be used, and hence me posting this question.
What is the proper setup for a use-case like mine? How should reliable channels meant for sparse small donations be set up?
I am very new to bitcoin and lightning.