Background Situation: you maintain a heavy internet presence in which you write lots of articles on various "issues" and have attracted a sizable community of hangers-on who like to argue about the issues. The "issues" you write about are things you believe in strongly.
Puzzling Development: you have a fundraiser for the "issues" you care about and are disappointed in the outcome (more on this later, see (!)). You get some amount of donations but the most-visible response is a lot of arguing and discussion, which you (correctly) conclude is counterproductive to the fundraising process.
Possible Conclusion One: there's a sizable community of people who like discussing and arguing about these issues, the same way there's a sizable community of people who enjoy discussing lost, or star trek, or whatnot. The underlying issue isn't that important to them (no more so than lost or trek is important to losties or trekkies), but they sure do enjoy the arguing and discussion.
Possible Conclusion Two: there's a sizable community of people who deeply care about the "issues" at hand, as evidenced by the argumentation and discussion they exhibit. Sadly, the fondness for argumentation leads to counterproductive behavior when (eg) we try to raise funds, b/c the argumentation is public (producing negative feedback loops) but the donations are not public.
"Possible Conclusion One" seems the most warranted; there clearly are people who love arguing and discussion the issues but there's also clearly far fewer of them who care enough to donate (or otherwise do more than post comments on teh blog).
"Possible Conclusion Two" is more flattering to the writer but requires more assumptions about the community of readers and requires drawing more inferences from observed behavior than "Possible Conclusion One".
(!) Note that the reason the author feels disappointed is b/c the author looks @ the amount of donations vis-a-vis the amount of passionate argument the fundraiser provoked and is disappointed (that so much of the passion went into arguing instead of donations). This is tantamount to assuming "Possible Conclusion Two", as it is assuming you can correctly infer actual interest in (doing something about) the "issues" just from apparent passion to argue and discuss ideas pertinent to the "issues".
If you started from the assumption you had attracted a bunch of people who like arguing and for whom your "issues" are a kind of catnip -- the way losties and trekkies find lost and trek to be their catnip -- you might still be disappointed but for a different reason; you'd be disappointed with your ability to get your readers to make the leap from enjoying your work as "entertainment" to caring about the issues it raised, instead of assuming you'd already done that and then bemoaning their seeming inability to act productively wrt those "issues".