Community vs Consumerism

[Tyhm]

An issue that's been nibbling away at the back of my mind, in response to the recent conflagration of threads on Why Graal Isn't Making As Much Money:
You don't go to WalMart and they ask you to support the business. Businesses don't do that in America; NPR does. National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Station - all those things which have pledge drives - will Ask you for your money, and a big business just shows you shiny lights and takes it.
So, Graal is a community-funded enterprise. Arguably it's not-for-profit, though I imagine the top admins would love it if it was bringing in a profit...there's gotta be like 5 years of unpaid server bills backing up.
Anyway, getting to my question - Should Graal be Community-Funded, or should it become a Consumer Entity? Should it switch its business model from:
"What do you, the players, think? Less pledge drives? Hmm, no, can't do that...but if we get 100 calls in the next hour, we can stop the drive for the rest of this week, how's that?"
to:
"Alright Barnaby, the numbers suggest our average player's free-income level is about five bucks below what we're charging for upgrades. So we should have a sale? 'Blue light special, Graal upgrades $5 off, one day only!' There, that should get them upgrading again...and next year they better have the money. Put it on the calendar, next sale has to be about a month before their accounts come due so they can't get $5 off /next/ year."

Is one necessarily more caring than the other? Is one necessarily more profitable?