Three issues/questions from my point of view then:1) Does anyone who doesn't donate get discriminated against in any way? Sorry to have ask this but in lieu what's been said thus far and begs the question.
2) How bad is the activity on the forums/game that you'd have to make this thread? I ask because I am also part of another community which runs its server/site completely via donations and those are 4 digit numbers per month and they have no problem reaching those goals within the first week or two of each month through anonymous, non-intrusive to gameplay, donations and before you ask, their active playerbase is around 2000 individuals but they have less less registered users than Layonara.
3)Why not have a a highly restricted highly monitored pay per view ad banner somewhere on the site to help with the running costs? I mean even if it were a pay per click those have a optimal pay out of around 20-30 cents per click... 2-3 clicks a day....365 days a year...that's ~150 USD per year per user with minimal discomfort to the user, hell for some they might even be interested in the ad itself so assuming Layonara has people that love it for what it is, which I assume it does otherwise it wouldn't have an MMO in the pipeline, you could comfortably be paying a part of the running costs at the least without the need to ask for donations (2-3 clicks, maybe some site browsing, that's 5-10 min per day or ~61 hours per year per user assuming said user dislikes what he/she the ad). And here to prevent a negative effect on the RP itself you could have the banner itself only show up in one of the subforums considered to be out of game and you just tell people that's where it is and those who want to help up with the costs can do so either via direct monetary donation or via a donation of time, either way the bills get a dent in them.