I don't see anything wrong with that, and as a matter of fact many projected are already founded that way. For example, all the projects I did and published here received at least enough, if not more - to cover the expenses of things such as domain registration. even replacing a failed RAID drive in December :)
What i believe @jringo want's to say, is that it would be good to have these streams of money more organized, therefore used more wisely ad well as controlled. But as far as for Steemit earning, this is one (GridCoins) of the rear communities where people actually support each other and I hope it will stay that way.
It also helps curating the gridcoin tag on steemit. Marketing on steemit is probably even better than any add on CMC.
I'd argue an ad on BOINC Stats might do as much good as marketing on Steemit. Steemit brings in people already interested in the cryptocurrency aspect, and BOINC Stats brings in people already interested in the science aspect.
I'll agree gridcoin stem should have one joint steemit account, with password shared with all credible members on Slack, so we can all upvote and use our steem power on that account as well as delegate some.
From that account, who will publish most important news, we can get steem dollars converted to USD in order to pay ads such as google and similar whatever community decides.
This will both help us boost gridcoin here whenever we need it, as that account would be much more powerful then our personal accounts.
Actually I just made a proposal that we discuss the idea:
https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@crt/gridcoin-steemit-marketing-account
It could be a first step towards aspects of organization we are discussing.