In its current interactive stage, it's $12/month in server fees and about $55/month in admin costs. This just about breaks even with the advertising income on the blog from DhGate and amazon associates (when you guys buy something on amazon from a link on the blog I get a small percentage). I used to do the administration myself, but when (not if) something breaks, I'm not confident enough in my skills to fix it fast w/o breaking something else.
Other than that, and unlike many a non-profit, the forum runs on a gift-economy of paying it forward. People ask questions and in turn pay it back by answering other people's questions. People treat each other well and in turn get the ERE community. I, myself, occupy a kind of weird position in this, mainly tying things together and making sure the ecology hangs together: hardware, software, money, people, ideas, ...
If forum activity died because e.g. everybody had switched to their own pocket sized AI by 2032 just asking chatGPT to "Generate a conversation on the subject of XYZ in the style of the ERE Forum from 2015", there wouldn't be much point in maintaining an active written forum. I don't know if it is possible to [easily] generate a static version of the forum/blog/wiki for archival purposes although I should think so. If so, the server load would likely be quite low and alternative arrangements could come into play, such as https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about ... r-website/ This would be much cheaper to run and within my capability. It would even be possible to put it on a USB stick, etc.
The change of preferred format is definitely an issue when it comes to deep time planning. There's definitely been a drift from forums to zoom meetings or discord as well as a drift from blogs to podcasts. At some point in the future the ERE forum may well have to switch format to stay relevant.
