sythe.org is pretty much funded by the advertisement banners and donations from users.
I'm not sure about the utility costs, but let's assume they don't change much over the period of a few years.
So money from advertisement + donations have to stay at least on the same level (assuming cost of running sythe.org doesn't go up).
Sythe has suggested in the past (not exactly in those words) that we are good for now, but we can observe a long term declining trend in donations. If the income line and outcome line converges, then we might get to the point where it's no longer viable to run sythe.org.
One could argue that people donating to the repayment fund wouldn't donate their money to sythe anyways and that it's extra money that goes to the repayment fund and it has no impact on the amount of money they would normally donate to sythe and they would be right in most cases, but even 5% decline in donations to sythe is too big IMO and having inflated repayment fund wouldn't outweigh the decrease in donations to sythe.
If sythe.org isn't profitable it will eventually shut down. No sythe.org, no repayment fund at all.
It would have to be a great PR move and a good investment in terms of extra users signing up to sythe.org because of a bigger repayment fund, as opposed to our competition, which I think it isn't.
If people wish to donate to the Community Repayment Fund they can do so anonymously. I don't think that there's a need to sort of advertise this option, as opposed to the donation to sythe.org, because they are essential.
Just a last thought - big repayment fund would result in the bigger amount of careless users entering 'too good to be true' trades. If one can get easily refunded from the pocket of a more fortunate user, there would be a decrease in caution when trading.
Community Repayment Fund was a great idea and it is working as it is.
We should focus on prevention, so that we don't need to increase the amount of money flowing through the repayment fund.