Income is great, I would suggest using it towards prototypes over paying folks for their time, unless the income vs time manages to warrant that. And pizza parties. People love pizza.
Being that this list gets, at most, 4 emails a month, the IRC probably less (and usually me),
what's the benefit of moving to a forum at an (significant) additional cost? I did just see the
hackday.io project pop up and believe that will actually attract attention that could build a broader community (ie moving to discourse won't build community in itself) though like discourse, I don't like that it's silos.
p.s. re: discourse
Personally, I hope there is a special place in hell for people who implement infinite scroll websites >:)))))