Please, please, please please.
ORGANIZE.
Any organization that runs on donations at the least makes a statement of needs that is specific enough to give people a goal.
What is DGN's exact monthly needs?
Who is signed up for a regular donation? What does that add up to per month? What is the shortfall?
Make it public.
Vague requests for cash without knowing what the need is does not encourage action.
For raising money, sites like livejournal have a very effective program in place. Free accounts are bare-bones accounts. Paying accounts get appreciable extras--avatars, extra abilities and tools. Any permissions you can take from free accounts--DO IT. Make those "extras" part of $2/month accounts. Simply making the posting interval go away for paying posters is not enough. People will wait 45 seconds with not much complaint because its not something they are willing to pay to make go away. Instead, value-adds are something people will pay for. Take features away from free accounts. People wont have trouble with $2/month. However--livejournal also has another great feature. You can *gift* featured accounts to others. This will also create more options for payment streams.
Clean up non-active accounts.
However, a note:
Until DGN gets better organized and open about this, you're going to have a hard time raising funds no matter what. So, even if you put the ideas to use to restrict non-paying accounts, until you are transparent on how the money is being managed (i.e. the basics--what are DGNs needs, what does DGN have, and what is the shortfall), there will always be the problem of confidence. If I knew there was an effective system in place to deal with DGNs finances, I would gladly pay my $2 a month, and encourage others to do so as well. But as things stand right now? I don't have a whole lot of confidence that even one time bulk donations would do much good in the long run. You need to get organized. You're only one person. Delegate this to someone who can devote the time to it you're not physically able to give.
I have met many friends here, I would prefer to see DGN stick around. I've come to like the place. Please, please, please do something to ensure it stays around by doing something more effective than this thread. ORGANIZE. Make a plan, put it in action. Otherwise, people will visit this thread, commiserate over how much they would *like* to give something to the site but have no money. A lot of talk will continue to happen, and DGN will continue to cough and shudder along with bandwidth outages. I don't want that. You don't want that. Nobody wants that.