What do you mean by actual $$? what does that $$ go for anyway? it goes to rent hashrate, so if someone would contribute DIRECTLY with hashrate it actually saves you money as a rental group because you don't have to pay him fees as you pay to nicehash.
Let’s say my personal gear hits the block and the mining addy gets paid. There’s no extra btc I would get for that, right?
Wrong, I don't know where the confusion is coming from, but this is like saying if you pay 0.01BTC for the rental you can only get 0.01BTC if a block is found, it's really isn't as complicated as you think, let's put this in a simple example.
Person A > pays 0.01 BTC to rent 500th for 24 hours
Person B > points 500th to the same worker for 24 hours
B would make $40 a day by mining to a PPS pool, but if he or person A hit a block he goes home with half a block, I hope that is clear?
Anyway, right now, nicehash pays about 15-20% more for miners, which means getting 300TH from that member is way better for the team than buying it from nicehash because then if you pay for 300TH you will only get about 250TH worth of hashrate, so if I was managing a rental I would rather get people to join using their hashrate than paying BTC.