For those of you who don't already know, on the 1st of August 2014, Mojang is making a change to their EULA, stating that server owners in minecraft are not allowed to use hard currency* to restrict access to anything that affects gameplay of players. Basically, minecraft server owners cannot restrict access to commands such as /fly, /godmode, /mc and various other commands, unless it uses soft currency** or is obtained via activity on the server or being a mod on the server. The only thing that server owners can use hard currency* for is for cosmetics, or even for access to the server. This means that the only incentive to donate money is to get something such as disco armor, because lets be honest, who wants to pay $20 a month or even on a one off to play on a server, just to find out after they paid, that they don't like the server or the community on it?
With no incentive to donate other than just to keep a server up, and, lets face it, with so many servers out there, having a server shut down on you isn't all that bad, unless you've been on the server for a long period of time and have grown fond of it.