> We polled our users and asked them what they would be willing do donate and the average was twenty seven dollars, and of course we have thousands of users
Which is based on the illusion that you get an unbiased sample when you ask users to respond to a poll. You don't - the people most likely to sacrifice a moment of their time are also those more likely to come forward with money, conversely those who didn't fill out the questionnaire probably have a majority of people who won't give any money.
Not to be a dick, but it sounds like this is roughly something not unlike a search engine. Google was built in a garage and available for free for its whole existence.
So as much as I believe in the abstract idea of making knowledge more accessible online, I'm not gonna pay before I see a working example of something better, and I might never pay.
Nothing about that inspires any confidence and left me pretty convinced that I would be flushing money down the drain on a project that'll be dead in 3 weeks.
I can definitely see they are passionate about it, but the messaging needs a ton of work.