it depend what you qualify as personal loss, if you're saying we need to reimburse Nic for everything she paid out of pocket vs. help keep the site alive at the moment those are two different things.
there are alot of websites and discussion boards out there that are running for free with a greater volume of people coming in then i've seen here.
there's nothing wrong with asking for donations to keep the site going but saying you need money to reimburse someone for what they've put into the site that's something that's hard to quantify. a lot of people here don't work and would probably give 5$ if it meant keeping the site going but vs. reimbursing someone for what they paid in the past, esp. since it was a free service being offered to us... I know what I paid personally yearly in the past to have a forum and discussion board split between 2 people. I don't know how much this site costs in comparision.
if there was a thermometer thing going on right now and I had a clear idea what the costs of running this site was I'd donate right away even if it were just for the extra chat room