There is some amount of non-trivial work that goes into keeping the lights on for a large and popular project such as this. I imagine the $12k/yr goes to paying

There is some amount of non-trivial work that goes into keeping the lights on for a large and popular project such as this. I imagine the $12k/yr goes to paying for his time and availability to manage this setup with a small portion of that paying for what is not sponsored directly. There are also probably other hosted services that this would cover. $1,000/mo is such a small amount in the grand scheme of things, a rounding error to even a medium-sized, revenue-generating company.