I just discovered mander today and am super excited by it. At numerous points in my musings on lemmy communities, I have returned to the question of sustainability. This is what brought me to mander: the thought that an instance can shut down at any moment, so I sought to diversify. Now I am encouraging some of my favorite subreddits to migrate here, and I was confronted with the same question of sustainability. It was phrased a bit more bluntly: " who pays for it and for how long?"
When the means dry up, what happens? Is the server transferred to another "owner"?
Are the costs low enough that it can be supported by existing resources (assuming user donations and a generous "owner")?
External funding: Wikipedia might be a good model to follow? Government funding? Surely some of us have written grants.
I really want to see something like this grow and prosper. However I also want to be sure it is worth the time for the contributors and that I have good answers to my favorite forums when presented with the above questions.
Onward!