I think I've hit upon a way of keeping those seeking status happy.
All those who donate to the site get a colourful set of stars (gold would be cool) for a month. That way, those seeking status have it within their grasp to influence the situation, whilst helping fund Aaron's [s]holidays[/s] servers.
Having said that, given the poor performance of the Donat-O-Meter, I guess it would be beyond the technical ability of the staff to link donations to star colour </challenge>