Find out what it'd cost to get these mailing lists and such.

I mean, if we have to put an ad up at a local college to get a guy sitting around trolling the internet for resources at $12/hour, I'll toss in some money towards it. I don't think we need a guy like Valg (and by that, I mean an intelligent and skilled admin) spamming around Google for 20 hours a week. People will donate if there's a goal in mind (like, hey, lets raise $200). I was talking about revamping the item search and I've had like 10 people reach out to help out.

I think most people are willing to help if you narrow it down to specifics of what they can do and what their contribution will work to achieve, in dollars & cents.

Here's an example.

If you posted on Contest Board "Hey, can someone get me a list of 15 of their local college newspapers and contact information", you'd have a dozen responses in a week's time. CF'ers though, being primarily young or very busy, tend to have short attention spans. You can't ask them for "continued dilligence", long term types of tasks. But many will at least give a gung ho effort if you segment it.