My website has generated quite a bit of goodwill in my community. It saves people considerable stress.
Donations make up less than a percent of my income. About one in ten or twenty thousand visitors donates. It does not cover my grocery bill. Even readers I personally advise rarely donate.
'The bare minimum hosting cost' is a pretty poor bar for informational content.
I wonder what Sheldon would have wanted. I was always under the impression that he saw it as a community service. Despite working at a bike shop he never seemed to push parts sales in his writings.
I think its entirely possible to recover the costs of a hobby that does public good through donations. Making a reasonable wage (especially by software dev standards) is another matter entirely.
Donations seem to do fine for my local makerspace, and local cycling advocacy group. Maybe this site, which for a lot of people would amount to an online memorial, is somehow different?