I agree that we don't need a centralized "Inkscape Foundation." Centralization rarely works too well in open source, especially since we don't seem to have an excess of people willing to head such a centralized body.
I think what we need instead is an "Inkscape Marketplace" page where developers, and later possibly also designers and other service providers, could advertise themselves as available for Inkscape-related work. Yet it shouldn't be an open-for-all wiki-like list, as that would likely scare potential customers off. We could use some minimum threshold for those willing to be listed there, for example (most logical choice) to only allow in those who have commit access to the repository.
For small projects, patches, fixes, etc., a bounty-based system may indeed work best: the customer sets the price/conditions and accepts the first submission that satisfies these conditions, no matter who did it. We can incorporate such a system into our Marketplace as well, or link to an external system such as Horde.
However, some customers will likely want longer-term commitments, ongoing work, or more ambitious changes. It would be hard to expect that people will jump on that "out of the blue" and work without some guarantee of remuneration. On the other hand, the customers would also like to look at the testimonials of the programmer and discuss the project with him before hiring. That's where the contact details of available developers would be the best bet, listed with each developer's area of interest and his main achievements in Inkscape.
Now that we're discussing a redesign of our site, does anyone else feel that we should have such a Marketplace page on it, possibly replacing the nonfunctional Donate page?