I dint read the whole thread before I wrote this so apologies if its been covered already.
I think funds should be used to fund any infrastructure improvements that are deemed to be currently inadequate or that could be considerably improved, as an example the servers themselves (not sure if FAF owns them but if it does then perhaps a nice upgrade or if we rent a hosted server then improving our service provider or moving it to a better location ect)
I'm just a dumb carpenter so I don't know the ins and outs off all this stuff but you see the point. I am in the early stages of making a tutorial and would never want to be paid for something like that...I think when a game like this is kept going by volunteers then more people have to be willing to volunteer to make it better without the expectation of getting money. The best FPS game in the history of the world was BF 2142 and it was kept alive for a while but it soon died (after bf3 released) because so few in the community were willing to donate their time to play/promote/develop it... We are lucky that FAF is still so strong and better than ever (despite what the haters say when they cant find a lobby) and the best way to keep it alive is for the people who love this game to help out where and when they can and to have as good of an infrastructure platform as we possibly can. If the development team is aware of a glaring need that would be solved with financial investments than that should be the focus imo.