I understand this point of view of being hesitant. I've donated somewhat to thirtybees through paid development or one-off donations in the past,etc. However, it took me a leap of faith to become a monthly backer today, albeit with a rather small amount. I'd be happy to contribute more once things develop and stand on firmer legs.
In my opinion, if you hand out here in the forum, donate at least a bit on a monthly basis. It doesn't hurt, it'll help attract new users and hopefully we can also get some developers to add their modules to the store. We need an ecosystem with third party modules, as @Traumflugrightly mentioned in his previous post. A lot of necessary services are not supported out of the box.
I'd like to stay with thirtybees but I can only do so as long as certain important thirty party modules or connector services exist.