Is there anything a non-AI researcher can do to help support this project? Is there a way to donate money? Or could a software engineer help with testing, tooling, or other kinds of infrastructure?

I was really excited about OpenAI's original plan and still believe that an open source solution is the best way to prevent the potential negative impacts AI might have on society. I can sort of appreciate why OpenAI went the route of going private and trying to monetize their work instead, it might prevent people from using their work nefariously and will probably provide them with way more capital to continue their efforts. But, I trust humanity as a collective more than any particular group of people in the long run. I'm sure there are many others like me who would be eager to help out if they could.

Edit: EleutherAI has a whole page on their site about how others can contribute: https://www.eleuther.ai/get-involved/. I didn't see anything about accepting donations though, if anyone involved with the project was interested in setting up a crowdfunding account somewhere I'd be eager to donate.