If people commit, that is fine as long as I am fairly sure it is coming.
It is more about people genuinely wanting it, if someone chucks in say $5, or even two bucks, I can take that as genuine interest in preserving a film.
I figure if it isn’t worth $2 to someone, then they probably aren’t all that genuinely keen on seeing it preserved, and my time would be better expended on a title that has more people keen on having it preserved.
There are so many films out there that have no ‘original’ home release, so prioritising is important. I’ve found you can pick almost any title and people will be “yeah, It’s really important”, but there isn’t an easy way to tell if people are genuinely passionate about preserving a particular title, or if they just want to add almost anything to their collection.
A couple of dollars is a pretty low bar, but it is one way (imperfect as it is) of deciding if it really means something to people, or if it doesn’t really.

In this case, I don’t like the film all that much, but I know it is of historical importance and that it is important to others. It is hard for me to sink the time and money into a film I don’t have a passion for, but the opportunity came up, and if people are keen, I’m happy to go for it.

Hope that makes sense.

Obviously if it doesn’t go ahead, any donations will be returned.