Hi Monks,
IMHO these communites sites need to be free of charge to remain usefull (all that many-users-highly-skilled-audience things here...)

The most promising way for such a community to pay for the creator is to find a company that considers the appreciation of that community important.

I know a german example. The site www.wer-weiss-was.de started as a not very big message-board created by a bunch of students. The community that sprang to life rapidly grew larger and so did the messageboard. Today this site is sponsored by ID-Media (which had a little icon showing up) and as far as I know the former creators are paid for their work. They got some ads but I don't think that they make a profit of that.

Thus I'd say The Monks should find a company, maybe involved in Perl, that makes it's money from other products and would keep the Monestary Gates open just for the appreciation of the visitors

And: Good Luck!

Regards

Stefan K