Another potential option could be decreasing the amount of CA servers. I do not know for a fact, however I do believe many CA players have a very similar connection to the CA severs as they do the US servers. The CA server hosting location is much closer to the US location.
When I say that, I don't mean taking them all away, I mean just a few. From my understanding, you pay for each server monthly (I could be wrong) and decreasing it by just two or three can really save you some money, which can be used to fund AS.
You could even do the same with US. Yes, US is the current largest community (I think), but two or three servers cut down would hardly even be noticeable, and if it was, these players can just as easily connect to CA.
Asking a US player to connect to the CA, and a CA player to connect to US if needed shouldn't make a huge difference because of the similar connections, and while it may drop slightly, it shouldn't be anything noticeable. Even if it is, it is certainly less noticeable than asking an AS player to connect to US, AU, or CA.
I think what is really being missed out on is the fact that the AS community is here. They are small, but they are here. It has been made clear through their posts that they are willing to compromise, with even just two AS servers.
I am absolutely positive that most of the US and/or EU community would be willing to lose only 2-3 servers so that the AS community could reopen, because it will hardly make a difference for us, but will make a huge difference for them.
I think even if you gave AS members a chance to donate beyond donor to help with the costs, they would. They aren't just having a grand old time arguing about this, they're doing it because they love their servers and want them back, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help however they can to get them back.
This is kind of like building a bird house in your backyard, leaving it up for several months, long enough for some birds to grow to rely on it, then removing it from the tree completely at random one day, leaving the birds who rely on that with nothing.
You can't build something this big up (despite their actual small size in numbers, the AS community is still in fact very large) and be so quick to take it down.