We could pool together cash for prizes, but that seems like it might be the wrong idea. What's the big pay off for making art? Personal enrichment, and a sense of accomplishment sure, but also publicity. Otherwise sites like deviant art, soundcloud, even THIS one wouldn't exist. It's not enough to just make something. You make something for the chance to share it with your peers. There are exceptions to everything of course, but this is generally the case.
What if there was a showcase at the top of the forums, and we had a submission queue to decide what it displayed? Three or four new resources every week. A nice image for each one. Sort of like a banner ad, but for stuff the users have made. It's so, so easy for a new topic to get buried. Someone can spend weeks working on something, finally post it, and...no one notices. Because no one happened to be around, or another topic was blowing up the recent posts ticker, or any number of other things. This would be a little window into the creative, resource making side of RMRK, a magnifying glass pointing out hey, there's all this cool shit you could use, and that could use a nice comment or two.
Users could make a little oh, I dunno... 500x200 image, if that to represent whatever it is they've made, and submit it for review. If it's good- not better than everyone else, just good enough to be worth showing off- then it gets added into the queue. The image would link back to the topic, and it'd get more eyes on it. Just free publicity! It would require a little moderation sure, an approval process, but other than that I imagine it could be largely automated.
This would require Roph's help of course, but I figured if I had the idea, I may as well share it.