In terms of covering costs, Lemmy.nz has had to do this since earlier this year (we borrowed hosting before this). Making it visible is important, and people will donate if they are aware but as our LemmyNZ census questionaire shows every time, there are a significant chunk of people that don’t even know how to donate!

I’ve been doing quarterly financial updates to make the costs and donations visible. Each post has led to a string of donations, not only from our users. One update had a $100 shortfall and there were hundreds donated in the following days!

So I highly recommend doing some sort of regular post so everyone knows where you’re at financially and as a reminder to people who want to donate but forget.