general 'user' donations wil be small. i would look at coinmap/bitpay/coinbase merchants and other services listings pages to find bitcoin business in your country, and ask them to help endorse your campaign
100 businesses donating just 1 btc each is alot easier than trying to ask 10,000 users to donate 0.01 each especially when that $500 per business could potentially save that business thousands later.
Yes, I think that you're right about that. Anyone who can point me to the right person to reach out to at such businesses, please send me a PM or an e-mail. I'm afraid that it'll be lost as spam if I start sending what looks like begging e-mails to info@bitpay, info@bitstamp etc.
sending an email/posting a forum topic asking for money in the first post is a ALWAYS going to look like a money grab. so try to formulate a message that mentions the mission/campaign and the details of the court case that can be verified. add a draft of what basic result you seek from the court (EG. NO VAT and to treat bitcoin merchants as bureau de change, rather then retailers of VAT categorized products)
the thing that i find odd is that the EU is even proposing to categorize bitcoins as a VAT rateable product. yet using UK guidelines say bitcoin by its very nature is a raw invention that does not 'add value' to anything that bitcoin was created using.
EG a raw carrot is not VAT categorized product. but if it was 'prepared' and packaged which adds value to the carrot. then the prepared / packaged result is VAT categorized. so i hope your team are good at drafting an explanation that bitcoin is not a final product that has a added value.. because a bitcoin is a bitcoin is a bitoin. there is no before, there is no after. it is raw.
anyways. try to draft a post/mail that talks about the campaign, and the details, and ask them if they are interesting in endorsing the campaign, to contact you back.
simple money begs dont get people interested so dont be too eager to throw a bitcoin address in their face at first contact.
also, i do not mean to contact coinbase/bitpay for endorsments par-say. what i man is to look at their list of partners (merchants) and find ones that are based in your country.
coinbase has 35k
bitcoin has 30k
coinmap and many other places, including the market place sub forum here lists many merchants. so seek them out. you may even find that some of these businesses can offer more than just funding.