We have a myriad of things to use the money on too. We need at least one Windows developer to make sure our releases are performant (at least up to the standards of the competition). If we don't do that soon, we're likely to lose the majority of our users to the likes of Affinity Designer, since Windows users constitute the majority of our user base. More generally, we need to be able to put together plans to fill in the gaps for parts of the project that require people to either do stuff they don't like (an alternative to telling people what to do, which I agree should not be a function of the committee). It's not reasonable to expect our users or developers to put that plan together for us. We need to be proactive in that, and I believe that monthly meetings would help.
I'd also like to point out that since we did have meetings that were more than just status updates, more things have been getting done, and I think it's a big reason why the project has grown.
Maybe they were completely invalid as status updates, but they have served us well, and I think we should continue them in some form. Whether or not that's video is up to whether people want video or not. I think we should provide the option. IRC has more of a technological barrier than video chat these days. It's easy for people to connect and use BBB or jitsi. IRC is still a pain for regular users.
-C