i like the idea of having wealthy people on board - i have personally experienced that this helps a lot ... also this will create awareness amongst the hi-society people, who sometime just for the sake of status give donations to the same cause/organization.
EDIT: the another idea is to put "Donate" button (asking users to donate by credit card) on almost all the web pages - more the people use your service the more the donation coming in. you may also raise some money by putting ads (text and display, related to your service) on the web pages, for example if you're providing online service related to health care then you can get advertisers from health industry (or if u want to keep it simple then use Google's and Yahoo's ad services).