Jeremy here.

First, regarding your Mom's rejection:

The CES Letter is not meant for a TBM who is not ready for it or in the right frame of mind for it. It is meant for doubting members or TBMs who have accepted the possibility that the Church is not true.

You don't send a TBM to Mormon Expressions or Infant on Thrones. Does this mean that ME and IoT is ineffective or useless if they reject it? No. It just means that they aren't in the right mindset and right mile mark of their journey to utilize it for it to be effective.

The fact that your mom is rejecting this over donations shows that she's looking for any excuse not to move forward with it. The right approach instead is to ask her the right questions by using /u/curious_mormon 's excellent outline (https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/2wfrjx/the_three_questions_to_ask_someone_before_giving/). After asking her the questions, and depending on her answers, have her read each one of the essays.

What this will do is get her past the biggest and most important hurdle of all: accepting the possibility that the Church is not what it claims to be. Her rejection over donations demonstrates that her understanding and acceptance of this one critical idea is either not there or not strong enough for her to have that deep desire and thirst to know more.

Once she accepts this possibility and realizes there may be more to the story, then she's ready for MormonThink or CES Letter or No Man Knows My History or An Insider's View to Mormon Origins or whatever. But until she accomplishes that key first step, all of the above are just going to be "anti-Mormon lies" out to make a buck.

Regarding the donations:

It's going to be obvious in mid to late August why I asked for donations. I didn't go take off to the Bahamas with the money. In fact, I'm losing money because I no longer have a full-time job. I'm doing the CES Letter project full-time at the moment and the monthly donations I'm receiving are about 45% of what I can make working in a full-time job. On top of this, I'm using the donations to pay for professional help. So, I'm burning through my savings at the moment but I'm doing it because I have an absolutely clear vision of what the next level of the CES Letter looks like and what it takes to get there. And I'm going for it.

My CES Letter and rebuttals have been free and will continue to be available for free in the future. People will always have the ability to download a free PDF or Kindle or epub or to access the HTML (the latter formats available in August). I only asked for donations after investing hundreds of hours and sacrificing so much of my free personal time only to realize that so much more needed to be done and I needed outside professional help to get it done. Again, you will see and understand better when I release my stuff in August.

CES Letter is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. It collects donations no differently than FairMormon and many other Mormon apologetic organizations do.

The reality is that it takes money to crank out high quality information and materials in an effective high quality way. I see CES Letter being a long term tool to help so many people and so I've been setting up the infrastructure and stuff to make it as effective as possible for the long term future.

Will some TBMs run away? Yes. Ironically, some will cynically point to donations while seeing no problem with donating to FairMormon who also ask for donations. These folks are not my target audience because they're not ready for it. I'm looking for the doubters. I'm looking for the ones who have already accepted the possibility that the Church is not true and are determined to find out the rest of the story.

Hope this helps clarify. Wishing you all the best.

-Jeremy