Modern text-to-speech engines are indeed a viable option for voicing things, as Darius has shown in Solaris. We have not discussed using it for BP internally, but it is a realistic option.
Kickstarter and crowdfunding absolutely isn't. Put frankly, there is no way for a kickstarter campaign to raise enough funds to cover our salaries; this community, as awesome as it is and as much as we love you, isn't big enough, and that's leaving aside issues and potential drama we would like to avoid. It's a topic we have discussed at length internally, and for now, that's our stance on the matter.
As much as we hate leaving things in an unfinished state, the simple fact of the matter is that by now most of us have moved on. BP isn't dead, but it is in deep hibernation. It may rise again, it may not; in the meantime, several amazing people are working on new mods that take what we did further.