Funding a website without selling user data or advertisements

I have been reading hacker news for quite a while and love what I've found on this site. I am thinking of starting a website but I am having a funding problem. I do not want to sell user data and I really do not like advertisements. I would like to be able to offer the service for free but I also need to be able to pay the bills. Has anybody had any success with alternate funding models? How would I go about making this work?