On reddit, it was frowned upon to create a new acc after getting banned - and still it was frequently needed to do so, because of some mod gone wild.
The same jerks who have been mods on reddit are now becoming the mods on lemmy. And they still get unlimited power, and still nobody is reviewing their actions.
Now, please explain: why would anybody share such stories of getting banned?
Nobody knew your scenario before you explained it in detail. It is simply not happening.
Organisations don't want to be bothered with such restrictions from a donor. Their principles are: fair and anonymous. It is hard enough already this way.
Sorry for the downtime and we will try to communicate the problem better in the future.
You did the right thing, going down immediately.
The solution for the announcement problem is to do it "out of band", as the communications engineers call it. That is: use a different medium. May be a webpage or even twitter or whatever. Ideally let everybody know your method in advance (make an announcement policy :-)) so the users know where to look for the info.
Remember, iron wasn't good enough to build the space shuttles. Iron comes down through the atmosphere, iron liquefies from the heat, forms a little droplet, falls into the ocean, cools down, gets hard again, gets picked up by scientist...
Tell me that you have never ever spent a year's salary for such a present made out of crystal & metal, without telling me that... :-)