I personally don't think anyone should donate here. Having good money chase bad money likely will net you a loss. But then again I can only speak for myself. When I have issues generally I like to deal with them myself and in this situation I wouldn't be asking for donations. It was basically your own fault for trusting the other party to keep their end of the deal knowing full well that this could happen (meaning there are dishonest people in the world).
One thing to do is chalk it up and never deal without an escrow. That is one approach. Hopefully others will learn from your mistake here.
Good luck.
I totally agree about the lesson we've learned... but I want to make sure we were clear, we are not asking for a pure donation, but rather to join our recover efforts. We collect 4 btc to pay the costs, iff we recover 35 btc + $2000 which is what was taken, at a ratio of 15/1 nmat will return 14 BTC to the people who help us fund the effort. That isn't the first 14 btc btw, but the equivalent of 14/37 or 38% of whatever we recover.
Not to argue with the idea it maybe very difficult to recover, just wanted to point out we are not asking for donations without participation.