[mothered]

In reality, most of the money goes towards upkeep of the site. Donations/upgrades were only created to help pay for part of the site. On a really nice month, the site covers its own hosting/advertising/improvements. When it comes to outsourcing (i.e. theme/plugin design), I generally have to dip inside my pockets.

Precisely this.

I've owned a forum many years ago of a similar magnitude, and It's not easy and certainly not cheap to run. Funding varies from one month to the next, there's simply no definite Indication of what to expect until the month draws closer to an end.