I've split it into high/low.
It's important for funding of Rust development to diversify, and right now there is no directed action toward this goal. One potentially engaging option is to explore whether it's possible to kickstart any amount of Rust feature work. Consider that community is Rust's strength and we have high visibility on social media compared to many software projects. Though software is hard to crowd-fund we may have a chance. Figuring out how to formulate it in a successful way would be tricky: need to have an especially inspiring pitch; the kinds of devs with the skills to have a big short-term impact on Rust can demand a high price.
My best idea on this front is to ahead of time discuss in the community the most impactful way to spend a 3 month contract, get lots of buy in and excitement. Make arrangements with one of the many talented students who work on Rust and have a strong reputation to complete a 3 month project for some (relatively low) fixed price. As students they can tolerate lower income and have motivation to do a high-profile contract as a prestigious resume builder. They would have to be prepared for extreme scrutiny.
We have a lot of experience with contracting for Rust so there's some evidence we could pull it off.
If we could do it once successfully on a very small scale, then we could build off that success to do it over and over.
High risk and a lot of effort just to plan.