I once ran and owned a very large car forum myself (about 80,000 members), and I too struggled to keep it running to the point that I sold it back in 2009 because I was incurring about $500 negative loss each month. That, mixed with the economy crash at the time, my job, etc. I had to let it go
. As someone already pointed out, these kinds of pleas will generate an initial influx of cash, but then you're right back at it again next month.
What does the $2,000 a month cost involve? Is it colo hosting costs? like a cage with some racks, internet connectivity, bandwidth costs, firewall costs, etc? I found that a managed hosted cloud option these days is probably a little cheaper, and typically runs smoother, as it they can make them elastic and grow, or shrink based on user demand.
What I mean by that is that right now you are probably paying $2,000 to handle a max capacity at all times, but you may only need that max capacity on game day, so having an elastic cloud option allows you to pay for max capacity only when you need it. When traffic is low, resource demand shrinks, therefore your cost shrinks. Then during game the opposite happens. Things like IaaS, ITaaS, etc. are the best options in today's market. Just my .02
