Yeah running a site like polycount is expensive, running a minecraft server costs even more, I appreciate everything that polycount offers and I clicked an ad, to help cover the costs of all my posts :P
Donating to turn off ads is a nice thought, but I'm not sure there's any value we could offer beyond "supporting Polycount." I'm also not sure the effort to get a handful of people to pay $10/one time or something would markedly offset the ongoing costs. The Spreadshirt site sold a lot more swag than the last t-shirt run…