Perhaps you could “sponsor” someone else, e.g. evangelize / recommend Discourse and convince them to sign up as a customer. This is always greatly appreciated and it is as if you signed up yourself in my book 
Longer term, @sam suggested we have a referral program where both parties get one month free.
I imagine just mentioning to people that Discourse is a thing would suffice. They may not have the need directly but they may know someone who does.
Organisations can’t pay for that kind of advertising so it would hold far more value than money.
Do you accept Bitcoin donations?
We don’t accept any donations at this time, other than your time. Spreading the word about Discourse is always appreciated, too!
quick side note: Saw the message advising this might be ‘bumping’ as I started writing so it’s not deliberate - more the case that donating is the higher priority for me and this page covered most of what I thought.
Sounds like a dream set-up asking for our time more than money.
I have tried to contribute writting two things so far… mouse clicking arrows to jump reply and also about a way to send [suggestions without needing to signing up with all the legal speak and associations] (Sending suggestions without involving legal terms, TOS, external agencies etc) which might be similar to the attachment to have it hosted on Digital Ocean… and not on my own space/other server… I’d like self-hosted because of data & privacy reasons… mainly against external agencies or spreading control… anyway it’s not that serious but kind of is and inter-twines a bit with legalities and 3rd parties overall.
Back to this, I’ll definitely try those things and donate time though I’m not sure what a pull requests is, and I’m already using another Discourse forum to say a few suggestions there, and lastly one of the suggestions is running our own forum, but that leads me back to trying to self-install.
What downey said about overheads might be true when donating… but donating has overheads either way if it’s time or money and both need figuring out and managing avenues. What about a love box people can just press (even multiple times) to show how much they like it and just for fun?
By the way, I’m never saw anyone as pan-handling here so far… I actively searched and had to dig a few pages just to get some info on donating!! Often like you said codinghorror something wide spread - but actually I think that’s not half a bad way of doing things, have a link somewhere hidden / deeper linked somewhat and make sure you’re never close to pan-handling… or have a click box with a heart and perhaps that’s a type of feedback without needing to get money in the mix… It’s quite an honour to be around these ‘people’ and times I see… such environments/developments!.. goooooaaaal! and yes money is just one thing… and certainly believe more in other things.
Another thing I did, which I do anyway, is make an appreciation page on my site for anything good (like Discourse), to show the forum moving on from things like phpBB and the forum called Fractal Future Forum, which is quite a bit about making processes and awareness in life better/progressive… though I am starting to realise heading towards using heavy technology instead of ourselves will top out and start to lose more values than gain because we all see and understand technology differently and using ourselves is best overall from start to finish of life/death. (i.e. technology birth and death is inherently problematic and consuming in various ways… and not unifying by default but individuals finding their own place in a free world is perhaps more unifying or happy bubbles can exist that for them that technology can’t provide in the same way). Sorry it’s a bit off topic.