Wow that is sad news, but I have a lot of confidence this will work out. My tech knowledge is limited to mainly just statistical programming in R and some Python, but I'd like to join the team and maybe learn some new skills (so long as I don't get in the way). Doing a quick google search, it looks like there are lots of affordable means to transfer this blog to another host, maybe even some with improved features.
I too would contribute financially. I would think that donations mentioned in this thread alone could fund the new forums for 1-2 years without any ads or subscription fees. An option is we could always do some kind of fundraising drive one day per year like how WBUR and wikipeda do. I'd rather do that than ads or subscription fees.